“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold I know no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” –Emily Dickinson

Marina Tsvetaeva:

“Suddenly obeying an unknown necessity, you set fire to a house or push your friend down from the mountain top.”

“To be loved is something of which I have not mastered the art.”

“Externally, things always go badly with me, because I don’t love it (the external), I take no account of it, I don’t give it the required importance and demand nothing from it. Everything I love changes from an external thing into an inward one, from the moment of my love, it stops being external.”


What is this gypsy passion for separation

What is this gypsy passion for separation, this
readiness to rush off- when we’ve just met?
My head rests in my hands as I
realize, looking into the night

that no one turning over our letters has
yet understood how completely and
how deeply faithless we are, which is
to say: how true we are to ourselves.


I’m glad your sickness

I’m glad your sickness is not cause by me.
Mine is not caused by you. I’m glad to know
the heavy earth will never flow away
from us, beneath our feet, and so
we can relax together, and not watch
our words. When our sleeves touch
we shall not drown in waves of rising blush.

I’m glad to see you calmly now embrace
another girl in front of me, without
any wish to cause me pain, as you
don’t burn if I kiss someone else.
I know you never use my tender name,
my tender spirit, day or night. And
no one in the silence of a church
will sing their Hallelujahs over us.

Thank you for loving me like this,
for you feel love, although you do not know it.
Thank you for the nights I’ve spent in quiet.
Thank you for the walks under the moon
you've spared me and those sunset meetings unshared.
Thank you. The sun will never bless our heads.
Take my sad thanks for this: you do not cause
my sickness. And I don’t cause yours.


“Your lashes are- longer than anyone’s.”


Insomnia

3.
In my enormous city it is- night,
as from my sleeping house I go- out,
and people think perhaps I’m a daughter or wife
but in my mind is one thought only: night.

The July wind now sweeps a way for- me.
From somewhere, some window, music though- faint.
The wind can blow until the dawn- today,
in through the fine walls of the breast rib-cage.

Black poplars, windows, filled with- light.
Music from high buildings, in my hand a flower.
Look at my steps- following- nobody.
Look at my shadow, nothing’s here of me.

The lights are- like threads of golden beads
in my mouth is the taste of night- leaf.
Liberate me from the bonds of- day,
my friends, understand: I’m nothing but your dream.

8.
Black as- the centre of an eye, the centre, a blackness
that sucks at light. I love your vigilance

Night, first mother of songs, give me the voice to sing of you
in those fingers lies the bridle of the four winds.

Crying out, offering words of homage to you, I am
only a shell where the ocean is still sounding.

But I have looked too long into human eyes.
Reduce me now to ashes- Night, like a black sun.


Yesterday he still looked in my eyes

Yesterday he still looked in my eyes, yet
today his looks are bent aside. Yesterday
he sat here until the birds began, but
today all those larks are ravens.

Stupid creature! And you are wise, you
live while I am stunned.
Now for the lament of women in all times:
-My love, what was it I did to you?

And tears are water, blood is water,
a woman always washes in blood and tears..
Love is a step-mother, and no mother:
then expect no justice or mercy from her.

Ships carry away the ones we love.
Along the white road they are taken away.
And one cry stretches along the earth:
-My love, what was it I did to you?

Yesterday, he lay at my feet. He even
compared me with the Chinese empire! Then
suddenly he let his hands fall open, and
my life fell out like a rusty kopek.

A child-murderer, before some court
I stand, loathsome and timid I am.
And yet even in Hell I shall demand:
-My love, what was it I did to you?

I ask this chair, I ask the bed: Why?
Why do I suffer and live in penury?
His kisses stopped. He wanted to break you.
To kiss another girl is their reply.

He taught me to live in fire, he threw me there,
and then abandoned me on steppes of ice.
My love, I know what you have done to me.
-My love, what was it I did to you?

I know everything, don’t argue with me!
I can see now, I’m a lover no longer.
And I know wherever love holds power
Death approaches soon like a gardener.

It is almost like shaking a tree, in time
some ripe apple comes falling down. So
for everything, for everything forgive me,
-my love whatever it was I did to you.


The Poet
3.
Now what shall I do here, blind and fatherless?
Everyone else can see and has a father.
Passion in this world has to leap anathema
as it might be over the walls of a trench
and weeping is called a cold in the head.

What shall I do, by nature and trade
a singing creature (like a wire- sunburn! Siberia!)
as I go over the bridge of my enchanted
visions, that cannot be weighed, in a
world that deals only in weights and measures.

What shall I do, singer and first-born, in a
world where the deepest black is grey,
and inspiration is kept in a thermos?
with all this immensity
in a measured world?


Appointment
I’ll be late for the meeting
we arranged. When I arrive, my hair
will be grey. Yes, I suppose I grabbed
at Spring. And you set your hopes much too high.

I shall walk with this bitterness for years
across mountains or town squares equally,
(Ophelia didn’t flinch at rue!) I’ll walk
on souls and on hands without shuddering.

Living on. As the earth continues,
With blood in every thicket, every creek.
Even though Ophelia’s face is waiting
Between the grasses bordering every stream.

She gulped at love, and filled her mouth
with silt. A shaft of light on metal!
I set my love upon you. Much too high.
In the sky arrange my burial.


You loved me

You loved me. And your lies had their own probity.
There was a truth in every falsehood.
Your love went far beyond any possible
boundary as no one else’s could.

Your love seemed to last even longer
than time itself. Now you wave your hand-
and suddenly your love for me is over!
That is the truth in five words.


It’s not like waiting for post

It’s not like waiting for post.
This is how you wait for
the one letter you need:
soft stuff bound with
tape and paste.
Inside a little word.
That’s all. Happiness.

Waiting for happiness?
It’s more like waiting for death.
The soldiers will salute
and three chunks of lead
will slam into your chest.
Your eyes will then flash red.

No question of joy.
Too old now, all bloom gone.
Waiting for what else now but
black muzzles in a square yard.

A square letter. I think
There may be spells in the ink.
No hope. And no one is
too old to face death

or such a square envelope.


My ear attends to you

My ear attends to you,
as a mother hears in her sleep.
To a feverish child, she whispers
as I bend over you.

At the skin, my blood calls out to
your heart, my whole sky craves
an island of tenderness.
My rivers tilt towards you.

And I am drawn downwards
as stairs slope into a garden,
or some willow’s bough falls
straight down, away from a milestone.

Stars are pulled to the earth
and laurels on graves won
with suffering, attract banners.
An owl longs for a hollow.

And I lean down
towards you with muscle and wing,
as if to a grave stone,
(I put the years to sleep)

my lips seek yours… like spring.


As people listen intently

As people listen intently
(a river’s mouth to it’s source)
that’s how they smell a flower
to the depths, till they lose all sense.

That’s how they feel their deepest
craving in dark air,
as children lying in blue sheets
peer into memory.

And that’s how a young boy feels
when his blood begins to change.
When people fall in love with love
they fling themselves in the abyss.


Strong doesn’t mate with strong

Strong doesn’t mate with strong.
It’s not allowed in this world.
So Siegried missed Brunhilde,
in marriage fixed by a sword.

Like buffaloes, stone on stone,
in brotherly hatred joined,
he left their marriage bed, unknown,
she slept, unrecognized.

Apart, in the marriage bed.
Apart, in ambiguous language.
Apart, and clutched like a fist.
Too late. And apart. That’s marriage.

More ancient evil yet:
Achilles, Thetis’ son
crushing the Amazon
like a lion, missed Penthesilia.

Thing of her glance, when felled
from her horse in the mud,
she looked up at him then
and not down from Olympus.

And afterwards, his passion was
to snatch his wife back from darkness?
But equal never mates with equal.

And so, we missed each other.