Impressionism
The artist painted
How deeply lilacs fainted,
Ply over ply, resounding colors
He dabbed like scabs on canvas.
He realized the thickness of oil:
He made his clotted summer boil
Heated by a violent violet mind
Expanded in a sultry daylight.
A shade grows more violet with each touch!
A whistle or a whip dies like a match.
You'll say: chefs in the kitchens
Are cooking now fat pigeons.
There is a hint of a swing,
Veils are vague, I guess,
And a bumblebee, a king,
Reigns in this summer mess.
Moscow, May 23, 1932
---Osip Mandelstam (translated by Ian Probstein)
---found in Centuries Encircle Me with Fire: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. A Bilingual English-Russian Edition (2022; this poem composed ca. 1931-34)