And I said — “What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?”
She replied — “Ulalume — Ulalume! —
’T is the vault of thy lost Ulalume!”
Edgar Allen Poe - Ulalume
We do not put up with tense silence -
The imperfection of souls, in the end, is upsetting!
Then the reader shows up, of course, perplexed,
And happily was welcomed; be our guest!
Oh, I know who stood here, unseen;
A fellow of nightmares reading Ulalume.
Sense - vanity and the word - just noise,
When phonetics are the handmaid of a seraph.
Of Edgar’s House of Usher the harp sang.
The lunatic sipped water, came to, went silent.
I was in the street. It whistled, the silk of autumn -
And a scarf, silk, ticklish, warmed my neck.
Osip Mandelstam, 1912
