He Who Had Found a Horseshoe

The Jewish-Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), one of the poets of twentieth century Russia, wrote in 1923 a poem with the title: He Who Had Found a Horseshoe'. Stalin felt insulted by the poems of Mandelstam and banished him to a labor camp. He died in a Gulag camp near Vladivostok.

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938

From this poem:

He who finds a horseshoe
Blows the dust from it
And polishes it with wool,
until it shines;
Then hangs it over the threshold,
That it may rest,
And no longer need to strike a spark from the flint.

From: New England
Review Volume 34,
Number 3-4, 2014
pp. 131-133 | 10.1353/ner.2014.0056