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

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