[Don’t tell it anyone—forget]
Don’t tell it anyone—forget
Everything you have seen—
A prison, an old woman, a bird
Or whatever it could have been ...
Lest, should you open your mouth
At dawn or in broad daylight,
You’ll be shaken at once
By a rapid coniferous trance.
You’ll remember a rural wasp,
A student’s pencil-case
Or forest blueberries-those
You never picked up.
(October 1930, Tiflis)
—Osip Mandelstam
—found in Centuries Encircle Me with Fire: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam (2022; this poem 1930)