Notre Dame de Paris

Where a Roman judged a foreign people
A basilica stands and, first and joyful
Like Adam once, an arch plays with its own ribs:
Groined, muscular, never unnerved.

From outside, the bones betray the plan:
Here flying buttresses ensure
That cumbersome mass shan't crush the walls—
A vault bold as a battering-ram is idel.

Elemental labyrinth, unfathomable forest,
The Gothic soul's rational abyss,
Egyptian power and Christian shyness,
Oak together with reed—and perpendicular as tsar.

But the more attentively I studied,
Notre Dame, you monstrous ribs, your stronghold,
The more I thought: I too one day shall create
Beauty from cruel weight.


-Osip Mandelshtam