John, Mandelstam is always welcome in my threads. A devastating epigram. I think the “cockroach whiskers” are especially famous. Amazing that he lived five years after writing it. I didn’t understand a few things in the translation, and they seem to be unclear in the original as well: 1) the verb translated as “go boom” is a neologism that’s open to interpretation; 2) the last two lines literally read: “Not an execution of his without raspberries / And the broad chest of an Ossetian.” Scholars think the Ossetian is Stalin himself, though of course he was Georgian. I found a whole article on the topic, but didn’t have time to get to the bottom of it. “Raspberries” also has some meaning that’s lost on me.
No, not Chicago. I believe there were still elevated trains in New York at the time. It may take a native New Yorker.
Carl
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