Bride of Ice

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by Marina Tsvetaeva

5 April 1923

  10

  With other people – in heaps

  of roses – in bits of weeks

  only guessed at…

  I remain

  yours, like a chosen bundle,

  even as the wind picks me up

  like sand or gravel, and the rails

  – overhearing me – send my dust

  out to breadless provinces.

  Do you recognise this shawl? Hotter

  than Hell gates when pulled across

  a freezing body –

  look, I fling it open.

  Below the hem: the miracle of a child.

  It is Song itself! And with this first-born,

  greater than any Rachel, with –

  my own imagination I dislodge

  this stubborn sediment.

  11 April 1923

  Sahara

  Young men, don’t ride away! Sand

  stifled the soul of the

  last one to disappear and now

  he’s altogether dumb.

  To look for him is useless.

  (Young men, I never lie.)

  That lost one now reposes

  in a reliable grave.

  He once rode into me as if

  through lands of

  miracles and fire, with all

  the power of poetry, and

  I was: dry, sandy, without day.

  He used poetry

  to invade my depths, like those of

  any other country!

  Listen to this story of two

  souls, without jealousy:

  we entered one another’s eyes

  as if they were oases –

  I took him into me as if he were

  a god, in passion,

  simply because of a charming tremor

  in his young throat.

  Without a name he sank into me. But now

  he’s gone. Don’t search for him.

  All deserts forget the thousands of

  those who sleep in them.

  And afterwards the Sahara in one

  seething collapse will

  cover you also with sand like sprinkled

  foam. And be your hill!

  1923

  The Poet

  1

  A poet’s speech begins a great way off.

  A poet is carried far away by speech

  by way of planets, signs, and the ruts

  of roundabout parables, between yes and no,

  in his hands even sweeping gestures from a bell-tower

  become hook-like. For the way of comets

  is the poet’s way. And the blown-apart

  links of causality are his links. Look up

  after him without hope. The eclipses of

  poets are not foretold in the calendar.

  He is the one that mixes up the cards

  and confuses arithmetic and weight,

  demands answers from the school bench,

  the one who altogether refutes Kant,

  the one in the stone graves of the Bastille

  who remains like a tree in its loveliness.

  And yet the one whose traces have always vanished,

  the train everyone always arrives

  too late to catch

  for the path of comets

  is the path of poets: they burn without warming,

  pick without cultivating. They are: an explosion, a breaking in –

  and the mane of their path makes the curve of a

  graph cannot be foretold by the calendar.

  2

  There are superfluous people about in

  this world, out of sight, who

  aren’t listed in any directory; and

  home for them is a rubbish heap.

  They are hollow, jostled creatures:

  who keep silent, dumb as dung, they are

  nails catching in your silken hem,

  dirt imagined under your wheels.

  Here they are, ghostly and invisible, the

  sign is on them, like the speck of the leper.

  People like Job in this world who

  might even have envied him. If.

  We are poets, which has the sound of outcast.

  Nevertheless, we step out from our shores.

  We dare contend for godhead, with goddesses,

  and for the Virgin with the gods themselves.

  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?

  1923

  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.

  1923

  Rails

  The bed of a railway cutting

  has tidy sheets. The steel-blue

  parallel tracks ruled out

  as neatly as staves of music.

  And over them people are driven

  like possessed creatures from Pushkin

  whose piteous song has been silenced.

  Look, they’re departing, deserting.

  And yet lag behind and linger,

  the note of pain always rising

  higher than love, as the poles freeze

  to the bank, like Lot’s wife, forever.

  Despair has appointed an hour for me

  (as someone arranges a marriage): then

  Sappho with her voice gone

  I shall weep like a simple seamstress

  with a cry of passive lament –

  a marsh heron! The moving train

  will hoot its way over the sleepers

  and slice through them like scissors.

  Colours blur in my eye,

  their glow a meaningless red.

  All young women at times

  are tempted – by such a bed!

  1923

  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.

  1923

  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.

&nb
sp; 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.

  1923

  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 the 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.

  1923

  As people listen intently

  As people listen intently

  (a river’s mouth to its 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.

  1923

  Strong doesn’t mate with strong

  Strong doesn’t mate with strong.

  It’s not allowed in this world.

  So Siegfried missed Brünnhilde,

  in marriage fixed by a sword.

  Like buffaloes, stone on stone,

  in brotherly hatred joined,

  he left their marriage bed, unknown,

  she slept, unrecognised.

  Apart, in the marriage bed.

  Apart, in ambiguous language.

  Apart, and clenched like a fist.

  Too late. And apart. That’s marriage.

  More ancient evil yet:

  Achilles, Thetis’ son

  crushing the Amazon

  like a lion, missed Penthesilea.

  Think 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.

  1924

  In a world

  In a world where most people

  are hunched and sweaty

  I know only one person

  equal to me in strength.

  In a world where there is

  so much to want

  I know only one person

  equal to me in power.

  In a world where mould

  and ivy cover everything

  I know only one person – you –

  who equals me in spirit.

  1924

  POEM OF THE MOUNTAIN

  Liebster, Dich wundert

  die Rede? Alle Scheidenden

  reden wie Trunkene und

  nehmen sich festlich…

  Hölderlin

  A shudder: off my shoulders

  with this mountain! My soul rises.

  Now let me sing of sorrow which

  is my own mountain

  a blackness which I will

  never block out again:

  Let me sing of sorrow

  from the top of the mountain!

  1

  A mountain, like the body of

  a recruit mown down by shells,

  wanting lips that were

  unkissed, and a wedding ceremony

  the mountain demanded those.

  Instead, an ocean broke into its ears

  with sudden shouts of hooray! Though

  the mountain fought and struggled.

  The mountain was like thunder!

  A chest drummed on by Titans.

  (Do you remember that last house

  of the mountain – the end of the suburb?)

  The mountain was many worlds!

  And God took a high price for one.

  Sorrow began with a mountain.

  This mountain looked on the town.

  2

  Not Parnassus not Sinai

  simply a bare and military

  hill. Form up! Fire!

  Why is it then in my eyes

  (since it was October and not May)

  that mountain was Paradise?

  3

  On an open hand Paradise was offered,

  (if it’s too hot, don’t even touch it!)

  threw itself under our feet with all

  its gullies and steep crags,

  with paws of Titans, with all

  its shrubbery and pines

  the mountain seized the skirts of our

  coats, and commanded: stop.

  How far from schoolbook Paradise

  it was: so windy, when

  the mountain pulled us down on our

  backs. To itself. Saying: lie here!

  The violence of that pull bewildered us.

  How? Even now I don’t know.

  Mountain. Pimp. For holiness.

  It pointed, to say: here.

  4

  How to forget Persephone’s pomegranate

  seed in the coldness of winter?

  I remember lips half-opening to

  mine, like the valves of a shell-creature

  lost because of that seed, Persephone!

  Continuous as the redness of lips,

  and your eyelashes were like jagged points

  upon the golden angles of a star.

  5

  Not that passion is deceitful or imaginary!

  It doesn’t lie. Simply, it doesn’t last!

  If only we could come into this world as though

  we were common people in love

  be sensible, see things as they are: this

  is just a hill, just a bump in the ground.

  (And yet they say it is by the pull of

  an abyss, that you measure height.)

  In the heaps of gorse, coloured dim

  among islands of tortured pines…

  (In delirium above the level of

  life)

  – Take me then. I’m yours.

  Instead only the gentle mercies of

  domesticity – chicks twittering –

  because we came down into this world who

  once lived at the height of heaven: in love.

  6

  The mountain was mourning (and mountains do mourn,

  their clay is bitter, in the hours of parting).

  The mountain mourned: for the tenderness

  (like doves) of our undiscovered mornings.

  The mountain mourned: for our friendliness, for

  that unbreakable kinship of the lips.

  The mountain declared that everyone will

  receive in proportion to his tears.

  The mountain grieved because life is a gypsy-camp,

  and we go mar
keting all our life from heart to heart.

  And this was Hagar’s grief. To be

  sent far away. Even with her child.

  Also the mountain said that all things were a trick

  of some demon, no sense to the game.

  The mountain sorrowed. And we were silent,

  leaving the mountain to judge the case.

  7

  The mountain mourned for what is now blood

  and heat will turn only to sadness.

  The mountain mourned. It will not let us go.

  It will not let you lie with someone else!

  The mountain mourned, for what is now

  world and Rome will turn only to smoke.

  The mountain mourned, because we shall be with

  others. (And I do not envy them!)

  The mountain mourned: for the terrible load

  of promises, too late for us to renounce.

  The mountain mourned the ancient nature of

  the Gordian knot of law and passion.

  The mountain mourned for our mourning also.

 

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