Marina Tsvetaeva- the Essential Poetry Read online

  THE ACTOR45

  2

  You’re so forgetful, yet so unforgettable.

  –Ah, You look just like Your smile!

  Say something else? – More beautiful than a golden morning!

  Say something else? The only one in the entire Universe!

  The prisoner of war of young Love itself,

  A chalice cast by Cellini’s hand.46

  * * *

  Friend, allow me in the age-old way

  To declare love, the most tender in the world.

  I love You. –In the fireplace the wind is howling.

  Lounging – staring into the fireplace fire –

  I love You. My love is innocent.

  I’m saying it the way little children do.

  Friend! All this will pass! –Temples pressed into palms, –

  Life will unclench itself! –Love will release You,

  A young prisoner of war, but – inspired –

  My winged voice will prophesize to everyone –

  About the fact that You once lived on this Earth –

  So forgetful, yet so unforgettable!

  End of November 1918

  * * *

  9

  Your tender mouth is – nonstop kissing...

  –And that’s it; I’m totally like a beggar.

  Who am I now? –The only one? –No, the thousandth!

  A conqueror? –No, the conquered!

  * * *

  Whether this is love – or admiration,

  The whim of a pen – or the reason,

  Yearning to be an angel –

  A bit of affectation – by your calling...

  * * *

  –The sadness of the soul, the enchantment of the eyes,

  The flourish of a pen – ah! – it doesn’t really matter,

  What you will call these lips – as long as

  Your tender mouth is – nonstop kissing!

  December 1918

  * * *

  17

  Mortal lips and mortal arms

  Have blindly destroyed my eternity.

  With my eternal Soul in separation—

  I sing the mortal lips and arms.

  * * *

  The rumbling of divine eternity is – more muffled.

  Only at times at the break of day –

  From the dark heavens – a mysterious voice utters:

  –Woman! –Remember your immortal soul!

  The end of December 1918

  * * *

  GRAY HAIR

  These are ashes of treasures:

  Of losses, affronts.

  These are ashes before which

  Granite turns — to dust.

  * * *

  A bare and bright dove

  Not living as a pair.

  Solomon’s ashes

  Above the great vanity there.

  The threatening chalk

  Of sunsetless time.

  It means God entered my doors

  After the house burned down!

  * * *

  Not stifled in rubbish,

  Master to dreams and days,

  Like a sheer flame

  Spirit comes – from the premature gray!

  * * *

  And it is not you who betrayed me,

  Years — go to the rear!

  This grayness is the victory

  Of immortal powers.

  September 27, 1922

  * * *

  *

  Quieter, praise!

  Don’t slam the door,

  Glory!

  * * *

  Table’s

  Corner — and an elbow.

  * * *

  A commotion, stop!

  Heart, give it a rest!

  An elbow — and forehead.

  An elbow — and a thought.

  * * *

  Youth is — for loving,

  Old age — for keeping warm:

  No time — to be,

  Nowhere to go.

  * * *

  At least a nook —

  Just without others!

  Spigots — leak,

  Chairs — thunder,

  * * *

  Mouths speak:

  Mumbling with marbles

  In the mouth

  Give thanks “for beauty.”

  * * *

  If only you knew,

  Near and far one,

  How much I pity

  My own head —

  * * *

  Like God in the Horde!

  The steppe’s — a casemate —

  Paradise — this is where

  They do not speak!

  * * *

  A womanizer’s — a swine —

  A storekeeper’s just — a detail!

  God for me will be the one

  Who’ll give me

  * * *

  — Not the time! —

  My days are numbered—

  But four walls

  For silence’s sake.

  Paris January 26, 1926

  * * *

  THE POET AND TSAR47

  1

  With the otherworldly

  Hall of tsars.

  — What about this one of marble,

  The unbending one?

  * * *

  So magnificent

  In the gold of the shoulder mantle.

  — A pitiful gendarme

  Of Pushkin’s glory.48

  * * *

  He cursed — the author,

  He cut — the manuscript.

  The vicious butcher

  Of the Polish land.49

  * * *

  Look more sharp-eyed!

  Don’t you ever forget:

  The killer of singers

  Tsar Nicholas

  The First.

  July 12, 1931

  * * *

  *

  I opened my veins: indefatigably,

  Irretrievably life gushes out.

  Set out the bowls and plates!

  Each and every plate will be too shallow,

  The bowl — too flat.

  * * *

  Over the edge — and past it —

  Into the black earth, to nourish a reed,

  Irreversibly, indefatigably,

  Irretrievably lines of poetry gush out.

  January 6, 1934

  POEM OF THE MOUNTAIN

  (1924)

  POEM OF THE MOUNTAIN

  Liebster, Dich wundert

  die Rede? Alle Scheidenden

  reden wie Trunkne und

  nehmen gerne sich festlich...50

  Hölderlin

  DEDICATION

  You shudder — mountains drop from your shoulders,

  And the soul — ascends.

  Let me sing of my mounting grief:

  Of my mountain!

  * * *

  I will not plug up the dark hole

  Not today nor tomorrow.

  Let me sing of my mounting grief

  At the top of the mountain.

  * * *

  1

  That mountain crest was like the chest

  Of a recruit, felled by a shell.

  That mountain wanted virgin

  Lips, that mountain demanded

  * * *

  A wedding ceremony.

  — The ocean into the cochlea

  With a suddenly breaking-in hurrah! —

  That mountain spurred and warred.

  * * *

  That mountain was like thunder!

  We flirt with titans in vain

  (Do you remember the last house

  Of that mountain — at the edge of the city limits?)

  That mountain was — worlds!

  God charges dearly for the world!51

  Mourning began from the mountain.

  That mountain above the city.

  * * *

  2

  Not Parnassus, not the Sinai,

  Just a bare barracks

 
Hill, — Line up! Fire! —

  Why then for my eyes

  (Since it’s October now, not May)

  Was that mountain Paradise?

  * * *

  3

  Like a paradise offered

  On a palm — don’t touch it if it’s burning!

  The mountain threw itself under our feet

  In the ruts of slopes.

  As though with a titan’s paws

  Of bushes and needles —

  The mountain grabbed us by the hems

  And ordered us: Stop!

  * * *

  O, it’s far from being an ABC-primer of

  Paradise — a draft of drafts!

  The mountain knocked us on our back,

  It commanded us: lie down!

  * * *

  Struck dumb beneath the onslaught

  — How? You can’t figure it out even today! —

  The mountain, like a matchmaker of — holiness,

  Pointed: here...

  * * *

  4

  The pomegranate seed of Persephone,52

  How can I forget you in the frosts of winter?

  I remember lips like a double seashell

  Partly opening up to mine.

  * * *

  Persephone, ruined by a seed,

  The persistent crimson of lips,

  And the spaces between your eyelashes — like notches,

  And the golden point of a star.

  * * *

  5

  Passion’s not a deception, or figment of imagination!

  It doesn’t lie — just don’t prolong it!

  O, if only we’d appear in this world

  As commoners of love!

  O, if only with common sense and in simple terms:

  Just — a hill, just — a mound...

  They say — you measure the height of a mountain

  By your attraction toward the abyss.

  * * *

  In heaps of brown heather,

  In islands of afflicted pine needles...

  (The height of delirium — above the level

  Of life)

  — Here take me! I’m yours...

  * * *

  Rather the quiet cordialities of the family,

  Rather the babbling of nestlings — alas!

  Because we appeared in this world —

  As celestial beings of love!

  * * *

  6

  The mountain mourned (but mountains mourn

  With bitter clay in the hours of parting),

  The mountain mourned about the dovelike

  Tenderness of our unheralded mornings.

  * * *

  The mountain mourned over our friendship:

  The most constant kinship of lips!

  The mountains spoke that everyone

  Will receive — according to his tears.53

  * * *

  The mountain also mouthed that life

  Is a gypsy camp, that you squandered your life in different hearts!

  The mountain also mourned: you could at least

  Let Hagar and her child go!54

  * * *

  And it also said this is a demon that

  Is twisting and turning, that there is no plan to

  the game.

  The mountain spoke. We were mute

  We let the mountain judge.

  * * *

  7

  The mountain mourned that it will become only

  Sorrow — that today there is only blood and torrid heat.

  The mountain mourned that it will not release

  Us, not let you be with another woman.

  * * *

  The mountain mourned that it will become

  Just smoke — that today: it will be both peace

  and Rome.

  The mountain mouthed that we are to beWith another (I don’t envy them!).

  * * *

  The mountain mourned over the awful burden

  Of an oath, that was too late to be cursed.

  The mountain said that the Gordian Knot is —

  Just too old — duty and passion.

  * * *

  The mountain mourned over our mourning:

  Tomorrow! Not right away! When above the brow —

  There already is no memento, but just — mori!55

  Tomorrow, when we will understand!

  * * *

  The sound...well is it as though someone

  Is crying...somewhere nearby?

  The mountain mourned that we have to go down

  Separately, through this dirt —

  * * *

  Into a life, of which we all know:

  The mob — the market — the barracks.

  The mountain also said that all poems

  Of mountains — are written — like this.

  * * *

  8

  That mountain was like the hunched back

  Of Atlas, a moaning titan.

  Prague will be proud of that mountain

  The city where from morning to night we

  * * *

  Trump our life — like a card!

  We passionate people persist in not being.

  In the same mold as the bear moat56

  And the twelve apostles —

  Revere my gloomy grotto,

  (I was — that grotto, and the waves splashed in!)

  Do you remember the last move

  Of that game — at the edge of the suburbs?

  * * *

  That mountain was — worlds!

  Gods take revenge against their imitations!

  .....................................................

  Mourning began from the mountain.

  That mountain on me is — a tombstone.

  * * *

  9

  Years will pass. And — the above-mentioned

  Stone will be removed, replaced by a flat one.57

  They will cover our mountain with dachas,

  They will clutter it with little garden plots.

  * * *

  They say that in these kind of outlying areas

  The air’s cleaner and it’s easier to live.

  And they’ll start to carve up the land into lots,

  And dazzle you with crossbeams of the dachas,

  * * *

  To smooth out my mountain gaps,

  All my ravines — turn bottom’s up!

  After all — for someone

  Homes are — happiness, and happiness to the home!

  * * *

  Happiness — at home! Love without delusions!

  Without the stretching of sinews!

  I need to be a woman — and endure!

  (There used to be happiness when he used to come,

  * * *

  Happiness — in the home!) The city of love,

  Brightened up neither by parting or a knife

  Will rise on the ruins

  Of our happiness: the city of husbands and wives.

  * * *

  And in that blessed air,

  — While you still can — be sinful! —

  There will be shopkeepers resting

  To chew up the profits,

  * * *

  To think up floors and passages,

  So that every thread — would be used for the house!

  For somebody after all needs

  A roof with a stork’s nest.58

  * * *

  10

  But beneath the weight of those foundations

  The mountain will not forget — the game.

  The mountain has — mountains of time:

  It has those gone astray, but not those memory-free!

  * * *

  Along the unrepentant fissures

  A vacationer will grasp it too late:

  * * *

  This is not a knoll, overgrown with families —

  But a crater, set into rotation!

  * * *

&nbs
p; You can’t fetter Vesuvius

  With grapevines! You can’t bind a giant

  With hemp! Just the madness

  Of lips is — enough for the vineyards

  * * *

  To begin to stir like a lion’s mane,

  Pouring out the lava of hate.

  Your daughters will be strumpets

  And your sons — poets!

  * * *

  Daughter, raise a child out of wedlock!

  Son, ruin yourself with gypsy women!

  There will be no den of iniquity,

  For you, bodies, on my blood!

  * * *

  With an oath of a man on his death-bed,

  An oath stronger than a cornerstone, I swear:

  You will have no earthly happiness,

  Ants, upon the heights of my mountain!

  * * *

  At an unknown hour, at an unknown date,

  You will comprehend with all your family

  The foolhardy and massive

  Mountain of the seventh commandment!59

  * * *

  AN AFTERWORD

  There are blank spots in memory — cataracts