Like the energies that turn water into waves, it is the impulse (poryv') in the words and phrases which, according to Osip Mandelshtam, turns language into poetry. The impulse has no sound - it is silent - but without it, a poem would reduce to its paraphrase. And a poem in translation? Unless the impulse in the original finds its way into the translation, the translation will reduce to a paraphrase as well - a sure sign, Mandelshtam suggests, that the sheets have not been rumpled and poetry has not spent the night - but how to translate poryv'? Working with Mandelshtam's poem "Tristia" - his variations on a passage from Ovid's Tristia - the article proposes a pragmatics for translating an "impulse".