O. Mandelstam

What street is this?
Mandelstam, mister.
O, let it be damned -
No matter how you spin this name,
It sounds not straight, but twisted.

There was little of him that was linear.
His disposition in life wasn’t lily-like,
And that’s why this street,
Or, more correctly, this slum,
Goes by the name
Mandelstam…

April 1935
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