'I am the gardener and the flower'

I love this enigmatic line from an early poem by Osip Mandelstam, the Russian writer whose own creative flowering was stifled and then extinguished by Stalinism. (He disappeared, presumably dead, in a labour camp in Siberia in 1938.)

The poem has had numerous translations, mostly rendering this line as 'I am the gardener and also the flower' or 'I am the flower and the gardener as well' and so on, but to me the image is perfect in this original version by the forgotten British poet Peter Russell who was the first to translate Mandelstam's verse into English.

By using the simple conjunction 'and' there is no need for additional words to emphasize the paradox - and I do love getting rid of superfluous verbiage, if not herbage as my garden here demonstrates.

The poem in its entirety:

I am given a body - what should I do with it -
Such as it is and only mine?

For the calm joy of breath and life
Whom, tell me whom, am I to thank?

I am the gardener and the flower:
In the world's darkness I am not alone.

My breath, my body's warmth
Already show on time's eternal glass.

A pattern is impressed upon it
That lately has become obscure.

May the dullness of the moment pass away
And not black out that lovely form.

Osip Mandelstam 1909, trans. Peter Russell ?1959