A good year for loquats

These look just about ready to eat, the biggest ones, don't you think?

I have been looking again at Osip Mandelshtam's poems again. I am at the beginning of a Kindle book of translations by James Green. I have tried other translations and never got very far with that, but these seem slightly more accessible (maybe just because these are his earliest poems; he was born in 1891!) and the book has good introductory matter, too.

And right at the beginning (before he had ever published any poems) is this short verse, 

which reminded me of these loquats I took a photo of today.

The careful muffled sound

Of a fruit breaking loose from a tree

In the middle of the continual singing

Of deep forest silence. . .    1908  (page 1)

                            *************

To read only children's books, treasure

Only childish thoughts, throw

Grown-up things away

And rise from deep sorrows.

I'm tired to death of life,

I accept nothing it can give me,

But I love my poor earth

Because its the only one I've seen.

In a far-off garden I swung

On a simple wooden swing,

And I remember dark tall firs

In a hazy fever.          (1908)  (page 3)

A full hundred years and more has gone by since these poems were written, yet we still have some forests, and in them, dark tall firs. It is hard to get your mind around one hundred years!

Here is a link to a short version of Mandelshtam's history.