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What shall I do with this body they gave me

 What shall I do with this body they gave me,
so much my own, so intimate with me?

For being alive, for the joy of calm breath,
tell me, who should I bless?

I am the flower, and the gardener as well,
and am not solitary, in earth’s cell.
My living warmth, exhaled, you can see, on the clear glass of eternity.
A pattern set down, until now, unknown.
Breath evaporates without trace, but form no one can deface.

Poem by Osip Mandelstam
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Book: Shattered Sighs