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# I love beneath the vaults a grey-haired quiet, the wandering of requiems and memorial services, and the moving rite to which all are bound: the funeral service at St Isaac's
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/liubliu-pod-svodami-sedyia-tishiny-molebnov-panikhid-bluzhdane-i-trogatelnyi-chin-emu-zhe-vse-dolzhny-u-isaaka-otpevane/
- Published: 2025-11-08T06:01:56.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T09:14:06.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Faith, Art, Books, Saint Petersburg

I love the priest's unhurried step,  
The broad bearing-out of the winding-sheet,  
And in the worn-out net, the Gennesaret gloom  
Of the weeks of Great Lent.

The Old Testament smoke on the warm altars  
And the priest's lonely cry,  
The regal humble man: pure snow upon his shoulders  
And the run-wild porphyry.

The eternal cathedrals of Sophia and of Peter,  
Barns of air and of light,  
Granaries of universal good,  
And threshing-barns of the New Testament.

It is not to you that the spirit is drawn in years of heavy calamity,  
Here, up the steps, is dragged  
The broad-gloomy wolf's track of misfortune,  
To which we shall never be unfaithful:

For the slave who has overcome fear is free,  
And in the cool storehouses, in the deep bins,  
The grain of deep, full faith  
Has been kept beyond measure.

*Literal translation*

**Osip Mandelstam, 1921**

*Illustration: triptych “The Labours of St Sergius”, Mikhail Nesterov, 1896–1897*