a plain dry necklace of dead bees

From Osip Mandel'shtam, Selected Poems 
translated by David McDuff, who wouldn't lose the poetry by emulating its original, stuffed-with rhyme form but tried for the sense and meaning of the work itself. And what touchstone fluid stuff it is.  Wonderful.  Poor Mandel'shtam: doomed to cross Stalin even trying to placate him.  

Take for joy from the palms of my hands
fragments of honey and sunlight,
as the bees of Persephone commanded us.

Not to be untied the unmoored vessel,
not to be heard shadow walking on fur,
not to be mastered terror growing in thicketed life.

We have only kisses now,
furred like the smallest bees
found dead after their flight from the hive.

Bees rustling in translucency of densest night,
their home the sleepy forest of Taigetos,
their food time, lungwort, mint.

Take then, take for joy my wild gift,
a plain dry necklace of dead bees,
bees that changed honey into sunlight.