(1892-1941)
***
Mne nravitsya, chto vu bol'nu me mnoi...
I like that you are obsessed, but not by me.
I like that I am sick, but not by you.
That never ever the heavy round Earth
Would sail itself away under our feet.
I like that it is permitted to be funny
And loose - and I don't need to play with words,
Don't need to blush in a stifling wave slightly
Having touched each other's sleeves, you and me.
And I like still that you can calmly
Embrace the others in my dear presence,
You don't predict me burning in hell
Because I kiss not you, but someone else.
Again and again my tender name, my tender,
You don't mention, day or night - in vain...
That never in the church silence for forever
Would sing above us: halle - hallelujah!
Thank you for that, from very heart and hand,
You do love me - and never knowing it! - so much,
For peace and rest allowed me at nights,
For rarity of seeing you at sunsets,
For walking not together under the moon
And for the sun is not above us all along,
For you are sick - alas! - but not by me,
For I am sick - alas! - but not by you.
Roland's Horn.
Like tender jester about his wicked ugliness
I narrate about my orphanhood...
Behind a prince is ancestry, behind a seraph - throng,
behind everybody are thousands like one
So as staggered - on live wall fell
And knew that thousands are to replace!
A soldier by his garrison, a demon by the legion are proud,
Behind a thief is the gang, the jester has his hump.
So, in the end, be tired to keep up
Consciousness: alone and purpose: to fight
under whistle and laugh of the mean and petty
Alone out of all - for all - against all
I stand and send, turned stone-hard to fly up,
This loud call to celestial emptiness.
And this fire in my chest is a sign worth,
That the brave King Carl will hear you, Horn!
Disciple.
To be your fair-haired boy
Oh, through all centuries!
To wander after your dusty purple
In the stern coat of a disciple.
To grasp through all people's dreg
Your sigh life-giving
By the soul, alive by your breath
Like by wind - a raincoat.
Be more victorious, than tzar David
Pushing the way through the crowd by shoulder,
From all offences, from evil and harm
To serve you - like a raincoat.
To be among the sleeping disciples
That one who doesn't sleep.
Before the first stone thrown to you
Not any longer the coat, but a shield!
(Oh, this verse is not broken self-willedly:
the knife is too sharp!)
And boldly smiled, before you
To mount on your bonfire!
***
Become that thing which is not dear to anyone,
Oh, to become like ice! -
Not knowing what has been, what is now,
What is to come.
Forget how the heart had broken
And recovered.
Forget my own words and voice
And the hair shining.
An ancient turquoise bracelet
On the stem
On this long and thin
On my hand.
How to draw a cloud faraway
This hand holds the pearly pen.
How my legs jump
Above the fences,
How always beside me
My shadow runs.
How sunsets are marvelous
In the sky,
How days are quiet
And shine.
All my tricks, all my storms
And all the verses!
My accomplished miracle
Would dispel laughter.
And me who is always rosy
Would be the palest one.
And wouldn't open - it must be like this-
Are you sorry for me? -
Not for sunsets and hills,
Not for a glance - my closed eyelids.
Not for a flower!
My land, farewell for all times,
For forever!
And moon will melt as well
And the snow will melt
When the charming century
Will rush away.
***
Frivolity! Dear sin,
Sweet companion and enemy!
It's laughter in my eyes,
It's the dance in my blood.
It taught me to not keep rings
No matter who I have married.
To begin at random from the end
And quit before the beginning.
To be like a stem and steel
In this life where we can so little..
To treat sorrow by chocolate
And laugh to the stranger's face!
***
In the black sky - words are inscribed
And blind are beautiful eyes...
And isn't scary to us the mortal bed,
And isn't sweet to us the bed passionate.
In sweat - who is writing,
In sweat - who is plowing!
Different zest is known to us
The lightest fire dancing in the curls -
The holy breath of inspiration!
***
A heavy forehead bends forward
Like grain bends by the wind,
Waiting for a harvest hand.
Friend! Indifference is bad school -
It hardens hearts like stone.
A kind harvester stubs and ties up,
The field again will be sprout by grass..
But the indifferent - God would punish him,
Scary to step on alive soul.
Friend! Unpoured tenderness - stifles,
Love though least - I'll accept!
Friend indifferent! It is just so scary
To listen to the black night in the empty house
***
Do not think, do not complain, do not argue,
Do not sleep.
Don't want to the sun, to the moon, to the sea,
To the ship.
Don't feel how it is hot in these rooms,
How it is green in the garden.
For the longest time desired and waited gift
Is not waited.
And the summer morning,
The bell of the running train
Are not rejoiced.
I live not seeing day,
Forgetting day and date.
On seemingly half-cut rope
I am a little dancer.
I am the shadow of someone's shadow
And worship two dark moons.
***
I loved you and perhaps still
This love hasn't faded in my soul.
It wouldn't trouble you again:
I want not sadden you by anything.
I loved you so silently, so hopelessly
Languished by shyness or by jealousy.
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly
Like God make you be loved by the other.
A.S. Pushkin
***
Bitterly hide gratitude
And dare not to reply on the keen call,
In bringing near see treachery
And where is truth, where is lie not be able to sense.
Bitter on sweet words
Make forced jokes, wearing answers in armour.
There was time - I'd been craving for the call
And waited and called (the not-comer is not to be blamed).
Bitter and shame hide the feeling,
Cease to love, but appreciate feeling pain,
On the true call not be able to respond -
How it is hard to act the woman's first role.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/v_otvet_na_stih.php
***
You hide me the sun in the sky,
You hold all stars in your hand.
I wish I could come to you
Like the wind opens all doors.
And mutter and blush at once
And steeply blunt the glance
And sniffling become still
Like in childhood when you are forgiven.
***
I love you all my life and every day
You are above like the hugest of the shades,
Like ancient smoke of polar villages.
I love you all my life and every hour,
But weren't needed your eyes and lips at all,
'Cause everything without you began and it was over.
But I remember still: an arc of the brightest light,
An immense gate, the clearest of snow
And horns with studded stars.
Aloft above it all was shade to half the sky
And ancient smoke of polar villages.
At last I've understood: you were a reindeer.
The wires
1.
By the chain of the singing piles,
Propping up the Empyrean,
I send to you my share of
The ashes from faraway.
Through the avenue
Of sighs – as wires to a pillar -
The cable: lo-o-ove...
I beg... (the printed form
Would not contain! By wires is easier!
These are the piles, on which Atlantis
Has lowered its race square
Of demigods...
Along the pillars
Telegraphical: fare - e - well...
Do you hear it? This is the last failure
Of the hoarse larynx: fo - or –give ..
These are tackles above the sea of fields,
The Atlantic quiet road:
Above, above it - and has - joined
In Ariadna’s: co – o - me - back,
Turn to look back!.. Gratuitous hospitals'
Abstruse: I shall not leave!
These are – the steel wires -
Windy – the voices of Hades
Fading... The distance
Conjuring: pi - i - ty...
Pity me! (in that chorus – this -
Can you distinguish?). In the agonal shout
Of lingering passions -
Euridice’s whiff:
Through embankments - and - shafts
Euridice’s: - a - a - las,
Not at -
2
To say it to you... No, to make it into the verse..
But the heart is so much wider!
And all Shakespeare and Racine,
I'm afraid, are not enough
To say it to you, explain..
''And all of them were crying
And if the blood is craving..
And all of them were crying
And if in the roses - snakes..''
But Thedra, she had her Hyppolite
And Ariadna's cry was about only Tesee!
Torment! No shores, no landmarks!
Cause here I state having mistaken in counting,
That I am losing in you all of them
Wherever and whenever ''not come true ''.
What hopes - when the air is all of you
And my own bones and blood
For me are Styx and Naxos!
Disheartened, I say: No use, no matter
How hard I try - it all would be in vain..
Wherever! I close my eyes:
There is no end of the hole
And the calendar lies all along,
Like you are breakup and I am not.. A loss!
Oh, where on the Earth, by what seas and cities
Should I look for you (the invisible one - the sightless!)
I cry embracing a wire pillar.
***
I'll conquer you from all lands, from all heavens,
Because the forest is my cradle and my grave is the forest,
Because I stand on this land - with only one foot
And because I'll sing to you like nobody else.
I'll conquer you from all times, from all nights,
From all golden banners, from all swords.
I'll throw away keys and chase dogs from the porch
Cause in the earthly night I'm more faithful than a dog.
I'll conquer you from all others - from her, the only one,
You would be no one's fiance, me - no one's wife
And in the last argument I'll take you away - Silence! -
From that one with whom Jacob stood through the night.
But before I wouldn't cross hands on your chest
Oh, damn it! - you are all by yourself:
Your two wings are aimed away to the sky,
Because the world is your cradle
And your grave is - the world!
***
World migration has begun in darkness.
These are wandering around night land - trees,
These are ripening by golden wine - grapes,
These are traveling from house to house - stars,
These are rivers beginning the way - back,
And I want to sleep - on your chest.
***
Solntse - odno,a shagaet po vsem gorodam
Feb 1919
The sun is only one,
but he's walking by all cities.
The sun is mine.
I won't give him to anybody.
Not an hour, not a beam, not a look -
To nobody - Never.
If all cities'd die in everlasting night,
Never mind.
I'll take him into my hands, so that
He dares not to go around,
Even though I'd burn my hands
And my heart!
If he'd perish to eternal night
I'll pursue him ...
Oh, my sun! I won't give you to anybody!
***
A cup of water, when you are thirsty:
-Give or I'll die!
-Recklessly - unsteady - like a prayer
Like a complaint in fever
I repeat all the time - and it's getting
More and more severe
Like in darkness,
When you so want to sleep - and can't.
As if there are not so many soothing herbs
by meadows!
Recklessly - persistently - senselessly
Like the first word said in childhood,
So with every second more inimitably
To the throat - like a belt...
And if it's just because of the earthly name -
It doesn't matter.
Insomnia
2
I love to kiss hands and love to give names
And also - to open the doors!
Widely - into the dark night!
Gripping my head, to listen
How heavy steps fade somewhere,
How the wind rocks
Sleepy insomniac forest.
Oh, night!
Somewhere springs run,
Drowsy - I almost sleep.
Somewhere in the night
A man drowns.
3
In my great city there is - a night.
I go out of the sleepy house - away,
And people think: a wife, a daughter
But I've remembered only - the night.
The wind of July sweeps for me - the road,
There is some music in the windows - just slight,
Tonight the wind will blow - until the dawn,
Through thin walls of my chest - to the chest.
There is a black poplar and in the window - light,
And tolling over the tower and in my hand -
a flower,
And step this one - following - nobody,
And this shadow and me - but I'm gone.
The lights are threads of golden - beads,
And in my mouth there is the taste of the night - leaf,
Let me be free from all bonds - of the day.
You see me only in your dreams, my friends.
* * *
Today there was a thaw,
Today I've been standing by the window.
My mind has cleared and I breathed easily,
There was peace in my mind.
Don't know why. Might be
My soul just got tired
And a pen and a pencil were not required.
So I have stood - in fog -
So far from evil and goodness,
Quietly knocking by my fingers
On the tinkling glass.
I have felt myself not better - or worse
Than this man on the street,
Than the pearly puddles,
Where the sky has reflected.
Than the bird flying through
And just the dog running over there.
And the woman who sings on the street
Didn't cause my tears.
The art to forget and forgive
I've learned by heart.
However, today something big
Was melting in my soul.
***
Love ! Love !
And in seizures and in the coffin
I'll become alert – enticed – confused – beat –
Oh, Dear! I won't give you up
Even in the grave, even in the heaven.
And I was given a pair of the magic wings
Not to keep loads in the bottom of the heart
I won't belong to them, the sightless and the voiceless,
The swaddled wretches poor colony.
No, I'll take my hands out from your cradle,
Death, I'll release myself from your embrace
And for the thousand miles around
The snow will melt and forests burn.
But even if – I'd let you bring me to the tomb
Having shoulders, wings and knees tied up
Only for that, laughing at the mold,
Arise by a verse or blossom like a rose!
***
To M.T.
I remember the night in the end of November,
Fog and rain. In the light of the street
Your tender face – suspicious and weird,
So a la dickens dim and foggy
Thrilling my chest, like winter seas…
Your tender face in the light of our street.
And the wind was blowing and the stairs–curving,
Looking at your lips without interruption
Half-laughing, knitting fingers into the knot
I had stood before you like a little Muse
Innocent – like the latest hour…
And the wind was blowing
and the stairs were curving then.
From under your tired looking eyelids
Uncertain hopes were flowing towards me,
Your stare was snaking, passing me through,
The slightest smile had touched your tender lips.
Languished and safe in his Holy clothes,
So seraph tempts the world–from under his tired eyelids.
Tonight again there is a dickensian night
And rain and fog, nothing could help again
And you and me–flood and the pipes are streaming
The stairs are flying too, your very lips are the same
And that step again, already going away
Somewhere there–into the dickensian night.
***
My carriage is simple,
My home is destitute.
Why, I am an islander
From islands faraway.
I live and need not anyone,
If comes – don't sleep at nights.
I'd burn my own housing
To warm a stranger's supper.
If looked – so I know you,
If came – so you live here.
They are simple, our rules,
And written in our blood.
We'll entice the moon from the sky
If it's darling – down to our palms.
But if has gone – then, like, has not been,
And me – as if nothing has happened.
I look at the knife wound:
Whether it'd heal up
Before the first stranger comes.
The one who would say – give to drink.
Pisala ya na aspidnoi doske...
I wrote it on a blackboard,
On the faded pages of the old paper fans,
On the window glass I wrote it by my ring,
On the sand shores of the sea I wrote,
On the ice of the river I wrote wearing skates,
That you've been loved, loved, loved!
I signed by the rainbow in the sky.
How I wanted that one would have flourished
Through centuries with me!
You, who tear my heart!
Who wasn’t sold! Inside the ring!
You’ll survive on the wheels of history!
***
Nights without the loved one
Nights with another man
Large stars above my head
Hands stretched to Him
Who has never been - and wouldn't be
Couldn't be, but must be
Tears of a child about a hero
And the hero's tears about the child
Huge stone mountains on the chest
Of the one who has to go - down...
I know all what has been,
All what is coming up
All the deaf-and-dumb secrets of
What is called in the dark and tied-up
Human tongue - Life.
***
I don't need you anymore
Darling, and not because of that
You wouldn't write me with the first mail
And not because of that
You'd read these lines written sad - laughing.
Written by me - to you only, for the first time
-You'll unsorcer, not alone.
And not because curls would touch the cheek-
I am good at reading together too!
And not because together
- Over vagueness of the titles!
You would sigh, leaning.
And not because the eyelids suddenly would close -
Together. What a nuisance, verse!
No, darling, this is simple
This is more than just annoyance
I need you now no more
Just because, because -
I need not you, not anymore.
***
I am a clear page for your pen.
I'll accept everything.
I am a store for your goods
To grow them and give you back
I am a village, the earth.
You are light and rain
You - my Master and god
Me - your groundwood.
Love
The knife? The fire?
Not so loud, it's a modest word.
It's the pain familiar as to the eyes -
The palm of the hand.
To the lips - the name of your own child.
***
In the world, where all are stooped
And foaming like a horse
I know - you are the one
of the equal streghth to me
In the world where we want to get
So much and more at once
I know - you are the one
of the equal value to me.
In the world where everything is
Mold and ivy
I know - you are the only one
Who could rule over me.
***
In the wild north stands lonely
On a bare peak a pine-tree
And dozes, swinging
And by crumbly snow is clad
Like by a chasuble she.
And she dreams all the time
That in the faraway desert
In that country where is sunrise
Alone and sad on the edge of a hot cliff
A beautiful palm-tree grows.
M.Lermontov
***
All of you, passing me by
To not mine and doubtful charms
If you only had known how much fire
How much life wasted in vain
How much heroic zeal and ardor
On accidental shadow and rustle
How did the wasted gun-powder
Turn my heart into cold gray ashes
Oh, the trains flying into the night
Taking dream away from the station
But, I know, that even if so
You would never have known, if you'd known
Why my talk is always so harsh
In eternal smoke of sigarettes
How much dark and fearsome sorrow
In this fair-haired head of mine.
Dream.
1.
Dug in, forgot all - and like from the thousand feet
Stairs without the handrails.
With rapacity of the inspector and the detective
All my secrets - dream has rummaged.
Hills - would seem firmly have stood -
Do not trust the death of passions!
Sharp-sightedly - as the inspector on the chamber -
Of the heart - perambulates Morpheus.
You! Collective platitude!
Not breaking off from the roofs!
Would you know, how on the feather-bed lying
You amorph and soar?
Falling! As the eggshell bursts-
Life with its cargo of husbands and wives.
Sharp-sightedly as the pilot above the enemy territory
Above - the sleeping soul - a dream.
The body, that has locked all the doors -
Vainly! - kernels sing along the veins.
With the accuracy of the sbirri and the operator
The dream has rummaged all my wounds!
It's open! No rikes to hide, under the dome,
From my own prophetic eyes
As the bribed confessor
Dream has shaken up all my secrets.
2.
In the brain there is a pothole lain, -
Three centuries till the spring!
To bed I go, as if into the box
Then, not to sleep, but to dream:
To see the dreams: David's paradise
And Achilles' sacred helmet -
To not see the walls!
I go to bed - for that,
I'm separated with Martin Zadekas
Not always and not forever.
In a kinship with snowdrifts,
And trust not the feather-beds:
Those could be corrupting - all the female flatteries,
Down, capture of hands and legs.
As a woman it would crash accidentally
The three day-old baby.
To sleep! The ceiling is a box
To remove! With all the blue to wash down!
To bed I go as if to the ice-hole:
You, - not self, - to drown!
Transatlantical tropical
Stuffy air, Hindustan's - silt...
I go to bed as if to a precipice:
Feather-beds - without handrails!
***
With others - into the pink heaps of breasts...
Into the conjectural fractions
Of the weeks...
And I'll be to you just
Similarities compilation
Occasionally - in the sand, on rubble
Picked up, - in the winds, on cross ties
Overheard... Found along the stark stations
Where my youth used to wander.
The shawl, do you recognize it?
Wrapped up by a cold,
Hot as the hell unwrapped...
Know, what a miracle
- under the skirt, alive child:
The song! With the first-born that is more
Than all the first-borns and all Rachels...
- The grounds of reality grounds
I shall overcome by ostensibilities!
(Provoda 10 http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/provoda.php#n10)
A minute.
Minute: passing: you'll pass!
So be past, both, the passion and the friend!
What will be thrown out now thus -
Tomorrow - would be pulled out from the hands!
Minute: measuring! Cheating a bit,
Hear it, now: that really never had begun,
What's terminated. So lie, so flatter
To the others who are still susceptible
To the daily routine of variables or reproach,
Not quite grown out of those. Who are you that
Exchange the seas? To a watershed
Of the soul alive? O, shallow! O, trifle!
Famously, the king had no more empires precious,
Than the inscription: "And this will pass" - on the ring...
On the roads of return who did not experience
Pendulum's agony, Arabian watch faces wane?
Minute: suffering! Ostensibly,
At a gallop - hesitating! Into the ashes and trash
Us grinding! You that will pass:
Minute: the alms to dogs!
O, how I want to leave the world
Where pendula tear the soul,
Where minute missing-outs
Rule over my eternity.
(http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/minuta.php)
***
Love, still suffering is alive
Find all the words to a lullaby:
The rainy ones, - and chiseled all,
Invent them, so that in their foliage
The rain could be heard:
That is not a chain about a sheaf:
The rain on the roof beats:
To me on the forehead,
On the coffin to flow down,
That the forehead - dawned,
The fever - abated, and someone
Would sleep and sleep...
Through chinks, they say,
Water filters. In a row they
Lie, do not complain, and wait
The unknown. (Me - will be burnt).
Sing lullabies - but, please, be a friend:
Not by letters, but by hands:
The cabin cosinesss...
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/lublunomuka.php
Crevice
How that case has ended,
Won't tell neither love, nor friendship.
With every day I respond subdued,
With every day I vanish deeper -
So, not excited by anything anymore,
- The tree waves its branches -
As if into an icy crevice -
Into the chest that so crushed about you!
From the treasury of similarities
Here you are - at random - a prediction:
You in me as if in a crystal coffin
Sleep, in me as if in a deep wound
Sleep, - tight is the ice rift!
Ice is jealous to its deadmen:
The ring - the armour - the seal - and the belt...
Irrevocably and without response.
In vain you damn Helen, widows!
Not the flames of Helen's red Troy,
The glacial blue of the crevice
At the bottom of which one would want to rest...
Having married with you as Aetna
With Empedocles... Sleep well, my dreamer!
And to the house people tell that all is vain:
The breast will not give out its deadmen.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/ras_shelina.php
Rouen.
And I have entered and I have told: - Greetings!
It's time now, king, to France, to go home!
And I again conduct you to the kingdom,
And you again would deceive me, Charles the Seventh!
Don't wait you, prince, parsimonious and gloomy,
The bloodless prince, not straigtened up the shoulders
That Joan has stopped loving - the voice,
That Joan has stopped loving - the sword.
And there was Rouen, and in Rouen - the Old market...
- All would be again: the last look of the horse,
And the first crash of the innocent brushwood,
And the first splash of the pinewood fire.
Behind the shoulder the comrade my winged
Again will whisper: - Patience, sister! -
When the silver armour will sparkle up to sky
With the pinewood blood of my last bonfire.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/ruan.php
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/magdalina.php#n3
Magdalena.
1.
Between us - The Ten Commandments
Heat of the ten bonfires
Blood of my own is repulsive
You are to me - an alien.
In the times evangelical
I'd have been one of them...
(Stranger's blood - the most craved for,
And alien of all!)
I'd have been bewitched
and thrown to your feet - the brightest,
and hiding the eyes, doe's? demon's?
I'd have poured and spilt the oils.
And on your feet and under
And just straight into the sand...
Passion, sold to merchants
Spat everywhere - do flow!
I'd have wrapped your legs into my hair
I'd have kept you in the web of bliss
By foam of the mouth and by the eyes touch.
I'd be spread...as some kind of cloth.
Aren't you that one, the very one
Who to the beast with the fiery curls
Said calmly: Stand up, Sister!
2.
Colours, three times paid as much
Costs, sweat of passion,
Tears, hair, - all are flowing free
And him,
Looking at the dry, hot sand
Benevolently, calmly:
- Magdalena! Magdalena!
Don't be so generous, would you?
3.
I won't torment you about your ways,
Darling! - all came true after all
I was barefoot, you gave me
Floods of your hair - and - tears.
I won't ask, by what cost and how
These oils were bought and myrrh
I was naked, you've built around me
The safest walls of yours.
I'll touch your nakedness as chaste as I can
Quieter waters, lower than grass
I was straight, you taught me how
Lean tenderly bending the knees.
Dig me a hole in your hair, sweetheart,
Wrap me all without linen.
O, the myrrh bringing one! I don't need it.
You've washed me up like the sea tide.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/drevnaa_tscheta.php
***
Ancient vanity flows in veins,
Ancient dream: to leave with darling!
To Nile! (not onto we want, into the chest!)
To Nile - or still to somewhere
Further! Beyond the unlimited limits
Of stations! You understand, that from the body
- I want! (in an hour of blunting knowledges
Can we protrude - from out the clothes?)
... beyond the otherside border: To Styx!..
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/cyganskajastrast.php
***
Gipsy passion of separation!
Hardly met someone - I want away!
I have dropped my forehead into my hands
And think gazing out to the night:
Nobody, rummaging in our letters,
Has understood us up to depth,
How we were perfidious, that is -
How we were true to ourselves.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/a_sled.php
Next time I'll come deaf-mute
To the world where I give my verse
To all, my hearing I give.
It's all the same - what they speak - I don't get.
All the same - who will decode? - what I speak.
God forbid me - again Corinne - to this place
Come where people are firmer than ice,
And ice floes - harder than rocks.
Deaf-mute - and with that long -
Here - down to the floor - braid
So that he wouldn't recognize!
Youth
2.
Soon from swallows - to witches!
My youth! Let's say goodbye on the eve...
Let's stand with you in the wind!
Swarthy my! Console your sister!
Splash the scarlet skirt,
My youth! My dove
Swarthy! Divide of my soul!
My youth! Console me, dance!
Slash with your azure shawl,
Unruly my! Didn't we have fun enough
To satiety with you! - dance, scald!
Golden my - farewell - amber!
Not just for nothing your hand I touch,
As to a lover I say goodbye to you.
Torn out from within the chest depths -
My youth! - go to the others!
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/molodost.php#n1
Last sailor
O, you - beyond all the lined up notes
The lowest one! - we should terminate the feud!
As that consumptive, who into the night
Had groaned: I want to like you a little longer!
Knitted her hands, and near
There were fights,
Strikes and blows and oaths, ropes.
(The seaman slept ceased to please,
Blood dripped
On the pillow sham...)
And then, held the glass upside down
Crystal and blood, being dared,
Laughing... - Mixed blood to wine,
Mixed death and love.
"For you just sleep, for me - no time!
Not having sat down, not having sung -
And the curtain! Tomorrow I'll lie! "
As that consumptive, that was asking all:
Be likable a bit longer!
Just to like you!... (hands were fresh still,
The look's vague, fingers did not bend...)
As that one with the sailor - with you, o life,
I bargain: even for a minute yet, be likable! Would you?
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/posled_moryak.php
***
To the appointment with you
I shall be late.
Having brought with me the spring,
I shall come, gray-haired.
You appointed it too high!
Years will pass - wouldn't change
Ophelia's taste to the bitter rue!
The earth is too long to live up!
Through mountains to go - and hay stacks,
Through souls to go - and hands,
A slum - is blood!
And each drop is a marsh,
But always around the streams -
Ophelia's face in the bitter grass.
Who passions having drunk, only silt
Tasted much! - a sheaf on rubble!
I loved you high:
I buried self in the sky.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/na_naznachenoe.php
To steal through
What if, the best victory
Over time and attraction -
To pass, not leaving a trace,
To pass, not leaving a shadow
On the walls...
Could it be possible - by refusal
To take it? To be deleted from the mirrors?
So: as Lermontov across the Caucasus,
To steal through, not having disturbed rocks.
And can it be - the best fun -
By the hand of Bach Sebastian
To not touch the organ's echo?
To degrade, not having left the ashes
In the urn...
Could it be? - to get that by deceit,
To leave the parallels altogether?
So: Time steals as ocean,
Not having disturbed waters...
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/nad_feodosijej.php
***
In Pheodosia has faded away
This spring day for forever.
And all the shadows are lengthened
By the adorable before-evening hour.
Choking from dejection
I walk alone, without a thought.
And are lowered and hanging along
My two thin hands.
I walk along the Genovese walls
Meeting the kisses of the wind
The silk waves of the dress
Undulate around the knees.
The thin rim of the ring is modest
And is touchingly small and pitiful
The bouquet of a few violas
Almost at the very face.
I walk along the castle shafts
In the evening and spring melancholy.
The evening lengthens the shadows
And hopelessness looks for words.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/uedinenie.php
Solitude
Solitude: hide yourself
As the ancestors into the fiefdoms.
Solitude: in your chest
Seek and find freedom.
So that no soul, no feet -
There are no gardens in the world
To solitude. In your chest
Seek and find the cool air.
Who had won on the square
Don’t think about, don’t mind
In the solitude of your chest
Celebrate and bury the victory
Of the Solitude in your chest.
Solitude: go away,
Life!
Through snow and snow -
Do you still hear the voice
Which sounded yet in Eden?
Here is your servant
Speaking, my Master - Time.
Your black horses' I hear footfall.
Am I not a more faithful
– and understanding
Of your disciples.
I tear a flower after a flower,
And kisses and kisses
My singing mouth.
- O life! A drink
Of the hot grog
Before bedtime!
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/cherez.php
Podruga
14
There are names like stuffy flowers,
And the looks like a dancing flame...
There are dark and twisting mouths
With the deep and moist corners.
There are the women. - Their hair’s like a helmet,
Their fan smells disastrous and subtle.
They’re thirty years old.
– For what you need, what for
My soul of the Spartan child?
15
I want at a mirror where are dregs
And a dream, the foggiest,
I want to extort - where will lead your way
And where’ll be your haven.
I see: a mast of the ship,
And you - on a deck...
You - in the smoke of a train... Fields
In the evening complaint...
The evening fields in dew,
Above them - ravens...
- I bless you to wherever you go,
To all the four sides of the Earth!
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/podruga.php#n15
A Comedian.
21
The champagne is perfidious,
Still pour it, have a drink!
Without the pink the chains
You’ll sleep in the dark tomb!
You’re neither a groom, nor my husband,
Your head is in the fog...
I wish still that the one and only her
The hero in the novel would love on!
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/komedjant.php#n5
5
Be friends with me – impossible, and more is just forbidden!
O those fine eyes, do look at me with a caution!
A launch should always float, a mill – it has to spin.
How would you try to stop the whirling, reeling heart?
A notebook is the bail – you won’t be the battle master!
And is it fitting to sigh upon the comedy action?
The love cross is too heavy - we shall not touch it thus.
Yesterday has passed - we’ll bury it quietly down.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/toska_po_rodine.php
***
Homesickness! A long time ago
exposed deception!
To me it’s perfectly all the same -
Where to be absolutely lonely,
By what stone roads to wander
Home with the market shopping bag
To the house which doesn’t even know
That it is - mine.
Just as the hospital or barracks.
All the same, among what
Faces to bristle up like the captured lion
From what human medium
To be superseded - indispensably -
Into self, into the oneness of feelings.
The Kamchatka bear without an ice floe,
Where to not get on (don’t even try),
Where to be humiliated – it's all the same.
I shall not be seduced by my language
Native, its appeal lacteal.
To me it is indifferent - on what tongue
To not be understood by the passerby!
(By the reader, of newspapers tons
An absorber, milking gossips...)
Of the twentieth century - them,
And I am – before any timetable!
Having been dumbfounded as a log
That is remained alone from an alley,
To me all are - the same, and all is - the same,
And, maybe, all the more indifferent I am -
To what once was all mine – of all.
All attributes are taken from me, all signs,
All – like by a hand - are removed, the dates:
Just a soul which was born - somewhere.
The country that so had not saved me
That the most sharp-sighted detective
Wouldn’t find a birthmark
Along the soul, all - across!
Any house is alien to me,
Any temple to me is empty,
And all - is the same, and all - is like one.
But if on the road - I see a shrub
Especially - if it's a mountain ash...
***
O, my modest home! The destitute smoke!
Nothing comes close compared to you!
With a window where we together were sad,
With the evening's simple kiss
Somewhere on the cheek, by the lips...
The day is over, the bolt is locked.
O, night without love, without dreams!
- The night of all the tired reaperesses,-
Who tomorrow will be up at the down,
Who tomorrow will be up as birds.
In the persistence of soul and bones
To work for the sake of children.
O, to know in the times of snow that
There will be flowers on my hill...
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/o_skromnyj.php
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/marina.php
Marina
1.
To be his dove, be his eagle!
More than mother to be, - be Marina!
His adjutant – the guard - the messenger -
The standard-bearer - the court flatterer!
The seraphim and the patrol dog
To protect unrestful dreams.
Greasy cards having grasped a pack,
Foot in a stirrup! - through fire and water!
Where astride - where crawling – where by swim!
By reeds – by willows – by bogs,
And where the horse doesn’t take, - there by flight,
All of the winds having charmed in a raincoat!
The black whirlwind which flies soundlessly,
Not the girlfriend to be – but a handyman!
Not together to be - the second one!
The twin - the double – the apprentice
Slender brother, the flame of bonfire,
Yatagan his curvy to serve.
Rumble of the Kremlin uncalled visitors.
If your name - Basmanov,
Give the way - concede to love!
Has opened the scarf abreast.
- Hands wide open! – So that on the judgement day
He wouldn’t stand in Basmanov’s blood.
2
To three Impostors the wife,
The haughty pan Mnishech's daughter,
You, to your insolent man
Not having birthed a son...
Awakened from the undressed hair sleep
Into the booming flight of the window
You, to your arrogant man
Not having jumped after...
On the market square, in the final hour
From slaps in the face and spittles
You, your proud man
Not covered with your body...
In a mask foolish he had lain,
With a bloody pipe in the mouth.
- You, to your daring man
Not having wiped out his sweat...
- Self-interested blood!-
Cursed, cursed you be
You - who to False Dimitri
was able to be False Marina!
3.
- My heart, treason!
- But not separation!
And the thief's swarthy hand
To her white lips.
Brief shake-up of bones about the walls.
- Grishka! - Dimitri!
- Czar murderers! Dogshit lackeys!
And – as if rehearsed, the jump -
Onto the spears!
4.
- Your breast is fragrant
As the rosemary tiny chest...
Yasnovelmojna panna...
- My young lord...
- How shall I pay for your benevolence:
Dark, without fame and name...
From under the lashes risen
Something has answered: - Life!
In each suffering stranger
We serve to our Sir Jesus...
Tries ostensibly in confusion
A handful of genuine pearls.
The pearls had scattered, - tears!
Each of the eyelashes having aimed,
Looks through them how in the rubble crawling
The newcomer collects them.
Insomnia
1.
The rings are drawn around the eyes
Shadowy - sleeplessness.
Has tangled me the eyes sleeplessness
By the shadowy wreath.
“So that! At nights
Wouldn't pray - to the idols!
I have given out your secrets,
Heatheness.
Not enough - for you – of the day,
The solar fire!
Pair of my rings
Carry, the pale looking one!”
Clucked, clucked - and have predicted to self
The shadowy wreath.
“Was it not enough - me – to be called?
Not enough - of me – to sleep?
Lay down, the lightly faced one,
People will bow.
I shall be to you the reader
I, Insomnia:
- Sleep, having calmed,
Sleep, having awarded,
Sleep, having topped,
Woman.
So that – to sleep - was easier,
I shall be – to you - the chorister:
- Sleep, girlfriend
Unruly!
Sleep, my pearly,
Sleep, the sleepless one.
And to whom we didn’t write letters,
And to whom we didn’t swear at nights...
Sleep all by yourself.
See, here you are, have separated
The unseparables.
Here let them go
Your two hands.
Here you are, had suffered up
The lovely martyress.”
Dream - sacred,
All - sleep.
Wreath - is removed.
4.
After a sleepless night the body weakens,
Sweet and not self it becomes - as if it's nobody's.
In slow veins yet arrows are as if melting -
And you smile at people, as if a seraphim.
After the sleepless night hands weaken
Deeply indifferent are an enemy and a friend.
The whole rainbow - in every random sound,
And in the cold suddenly Florence smells.
Gently lighten the lips, and golden shadows lay
Near the sunken eyes. This is the night brightened
This lightest a face, - and from the dark night
Only one thing darkens more in us - the eyes.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/bsonica.php#n4
5
Tonight I’ll be a heavenly guest
In your world.
I’ve seen sleeplessness of the woods,
And dreaming fields.
Somewhere in the night
Horseshoes blow up the grass.
Heavily the cow has sighed
In the drowsy shed.
I shall tell you with sadness,
With tenderness all,
About the goose-guard
And the sleeping geese.
Hands were drowning in the dog’s wool,
The dog was - grey.
Then, close to six,
The dawn has begun.
6.
Tonight I’m alone -
Sleepless, homeless witch! -
Tonight I keep the keys
From all the gates of the only city!
Insomnia has pushed me out to the road.
- O how you are fine, the dim Kremlin
Mine! -
Today at night I kiss on the breast
Of all around at the war Earth!
Hair – it raises not, it’s fur,
Stuffy wind blows into the soul.
Tonight I pity you all, -
Who are pitied, who are kissed.
7.
Gently gently, thinly thinly
Something has whistled in a pine.
The black-eyed little child
I have seen in a dream.
So the pine-tree, the red one,
Sheds its hot pitch.
So in my fine night
The saw rends my heart.
9.
Who sleeps at nights? Nobody sleeps!
A child in the cradle cries,
The old man upon his death sits,
The young one - with a sweetheart talks,
To her lips breathes, into the eyes looks.
If to fall asleep - would you wake up again,
Here? We'll have time,
We'll have time, we'll have time enough to sleep!
The watchman goes from the house to the house
Holding watchfully a pink lantern,
The frequent roar above the pillow
Beats and rolls without halt:
Do not sleep! Hold on! Be warned!
Otherwise - eternal dream!
Otherwise - eternal rest!
10.
Here again a window
Where again they don't sleep.
Maybe - they're drinking wine,
Maybe - they just sit.
Or, perhaps, - the hands
Two won't separate.
Friend, in every house
There is such a window.
A cry of separations
And brief rendezvous-
You, a window in the night!
Maybe - hundreds of candles,
Maybe - three of them...
There is no and no rest
To my reckless mind.
And my house too
Has got such a window.
Pray, friend, for the sleepless house,
For the lighted window!
***
Rivalress, I shall come to you
Sometime, at the moonlit night like this
When frogs howl incessantly in the pond
And women are mad from pity.
And, being touched by pulsation of the eyelids
And jealousy of your eyelashes,
I shall tell you, that - I’m not a person,
But only a dream that is only dreamt.
And I shall tell: - Console me, console,
Someone hammers in nails into my heart!
And I shall tell you, that the wind is - fresh,
That they are hot - above the head – stars...
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/sopernica.php
Sten'ka Razin
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/stenka_razin.php
1
The winds are gone away to sleep - with the golden dawn,
The night approaches – as a stony mountain.
With his princess from the tropical countries
The crazy ataman’s going to rest.
Young shoulders in an armful having grabbed
Yet he listens, a forehead thrown back
As rattles above the hot tent
A nightingale’s thunder.
2
And on the Volga – the night,
And on the Volga - all sleep.
Having spread the carpets patterned,
Lays on them ataman with the princess
With The Persian - Eyebrows Black.
The stars are not seen, the waves are not heard,
Only the oars and the darkest darkness!
Carries away the boat into the silent night
The sinning soul of The Persian.
And has heard
The night - such a speech:
- Don’t you want to lie a bit closer, sweet?
You between our women -
A tiny pearl like!
Or am I terrible so?
I’m your eternal slave,
Persiyanochka!
Persimmon!
* * *
And she – The eyebrows keeps knitted,
The eyebrows long.
And she – the eyes keeps down
The Persian eyes.
And from her lips -
Only a sigh:
- Jal-al-Addin!
***
Above the Volga - a dawn ruddy,
Above the Volga - paradise.
And the drunken gang roars:
- Ataman, wake up!
Haven’t you lain enough with the basurman's dog!
Look, the beauty’s eyes are all teary swollen!
And she – looks like death,
Bites the mouth to blood -
And go and go wild
Ataman’s sharp brows.
- Couldn’t get on with our bed,
Get on, dog, with our swim!
In the sky - all is clear,
Dark is - the river bottom.
A tiny red babouche has left
On the boat’s deck.
And there stands Stepan – like the strongest oak,
And he looks all white - to the very lips.
Has begun to rock, he has reeled all. – O, languishing!
Hold me tight, you heathen, - in the eyes is dark!
That is all to you, persiyanochka,
Polonyanochka, A little captive.
3 (Razin’s dream.)
And dreams Razin - a dream:
As if the marsh heron keeps crying.
And dreams Razin - the ring:
As if the silver droplets keep dropping.
The river bottom he dreams:
Flowers - as if it's paved by the carpet.
And the face one he dreams-
Forgotten, dark-browed.
Sits she there like god’s mother,
The pearls on a thread strings.
And he wishes to tell her something,
Yet only the lips move...
Has squeezed the breath – as if
Of glass, in the chest, is a splinter.
And goes, like the sleepy guard,
Of glass - between them – polog (tent’s wall).
* * *
At the dawn the helms you ruled
Downwards the Volga-river.
Why, for what you had me left
With just only one babouche?
Who would want a beauty now
In only one of the pair of babouches?
I shall come to you, sweetie, after
The missing one babouche!
And ring-ring, ring-ring the wrists:
-You had sunk for good, Stepan’s fortune!
Elder.
Elder has filled up the whole garden!
The elderberry is green, green,
Greener, than the mould on a tub!
If green, means, summer's in the beginning!
Bluish - up to the end of days!
Elder greener than my eyes!
And then - through a night - a fire
Rostopchin's! - in the eyes all is red
From the elderberry bubbly trill.
Redder than scarlet fever on the body
On all your pores, azure,
A rash scattering of
Elder - till the winter, till the winter!
What paints are dissolved
In the fine berry which is sweeter than poison!
Of the crimson cloth, sealing wax and hell -
Mix, coral fine beads'
The shine, the taste of the dried up blood.
Elder is prosecuted, prosecuted!
The elder - that has filled the whole garden
By blood young and blood of the pure,
Blood of thin branches fire-brushy-
The merriest from all bloods:
Blood of heart - yours, mine...
And then - the fall of grain,
And then - the elder is black:
With something plummy, with something sticky.
Above the gate which groans like a violin
Near the house which is empty
A lone elderberry bush.
Elder, beside my mind, beside my mind
I'm from your beads, Elder!
New settlers of my country!
Steppe - to hunhuz, Caucasus - to the Georgians,
Give me that - my elderbush under the window.
Instead of the Palaces of Arts
Only this elderberry the bush...
Because of the berry - of elder,
Childhood thirst my crimson,
Because of the tree and the word:
Elder (to this day - by nights...),
Poison - sucked up by the eyes...
Elder is oxblood red, purple red!
Elder - the whole place holds
In the paws. My childhood is at authority.
Something like criminal passion you are,
Elder, between you and me.
I would have named the century's illness -
Elder...
A letter
So people letters do not wait,
So wait - for a letter.
Cloth rag,
Around a band
Glued. Inside - a word.
And happiness. That's all.
So much for happiness nobody waits,
But one waits this much - for the end:
Soldier's salute
And in the breast - of lead
Three segments. In the eyes is red.
And that's it. And that is all.
Not happiness - why, me, too old for that!
Colors - blown off by the wind!
The inner square of the yard
And the black barrels.
(The square of the letter:
Ink and charms!)
For a mortal dream
Noone's too fast and far!
A square of the letter.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/pismmo.php
Earthly signs.
1.
So, in the scarce labour of the days,
In the difficulty of convulsions to be drawn to it,
You'll forget too the friendly trochee
Of who then once was your bold friend.
Her severity bitter gift,
And under slight shyness hiding latent heat,
And that wireless impact,
To which the name was - distance.
All the antiquities, except for: give and mine,
All the jealousies, except for that earthly one,
All of fidelities, - but even in the mortal fight
The non-Believer Foma.
Tender my! By grayness of the fathers:
This refugee do not take under the roof!
Long live the left-sided shields
Of all the not-philosophizing ends!
But, maybe, from the thrills and accounts,
From eternal femininities having tired, sometimes-
You will recall the hand without rights
And boldness of the sleeve.
The lips that were not demanding estimates,
The rights not following anybody,
The eyes, not knowing their own eyelids,
Investigating: the world - light.
2.
Seek for you the trustful girlfriends,
Not correcting miracles to numbers.
I know that Venus is - a work of hands,
A handicraftsman - and I know the craft.
From highly solemn silence
To the full negligence of the soul:
All the ladder divine - from:
My breath - up to the: do not breathe!
3. (BALCONY)
Ah, from the frank crevice -
Downwards - into the ashes and pitch!
The earthly love's fragmentary chunk
To salt by tears - for how long still?
Balcony. Through salty downpours
Pitch of the spiteful kisses.
And hatred's inescapable
Sigh: to breath out in a verse!
Squeezed in the hand the lump -
What: the heart or a rag
Batiste? To these lotions
There is a name: - Jordan.
Yes, for this fight with love
Is wild and cruelhearted.
So that from the granite brows - up
Having soared - to breath out into death!
4.
Hands - and in a circle
Of resales and swaps!
If only lips,
If only hands for me to not mix up!
These all are
Vanities from which can't sleep.
Hands throwing up,
Friend, I conjure my own memory!
That in the verses
(the landfill of all my Highnesses!)
You have not withered,
You have not dried out like all others.
That in the breast
(Thousands abreast in my tomb
Brotherly!) - the rains
Of millenia would not have washed you...
Body between bodies,
- You, that to me were the: vanish two-starry!..
So that would not have decayed
With the inscription: unknown.
5.
You will make sure – just wait a little!-
That, thrown out on the straw,
She didn’t need glories,
Or Solomon’s treasuries.
No, hands behind the head having held,
- A nightingale’s throat!-
Not about a treasury - Sulamith:
Only a handful of red clay!
6.
So that you wouldn’t see me -
In life – With the shrill, hidden
Fence I shall surround self.
With honeysuckle I shall be belted,
By hoarfrost be feathered.
So that you wouldn’t listen to me
At nights - in the knowledge of old women:
- In hiding, I shall become stronger.
With rustles I shall be surrounded,
By crinkles be feathered.
So that you in me not too much
Would have blossomed - in the thickets: books
Alive shall I vanish:
With fictions I shall surround,
By ostensibilities I will feather you.
7.
By stealth of hairs:
In smooth surface and in luster,
By startle longitudinal -
Blue of the midnights, colour
Of raven black. - smoothing and thoroughly,
Startlingly, lengthways - by the palm.
My mollycoddle! - do not be deceived!
So one smoothes down the malicious
Thought: break - separation -
The stairs’ last crackle...
So one smoothes down the thorn
Rosy... - you wound the hand!
Known to me in the life of hands
Much. – From under the brows light arches
By stare unseparating
All against-the fur your
Build I track down: pitch black,
Groaning under pressing.
It is pitiful to me your stub -
Bornly resisting palms: sheen of the
Hair, - just about through
The edge – the eyes... Chased into the inside
The thought all pervasive: mornings'
Delusion - under the skull!
8.
The blindlyflowing Lethe’s stream.
Your duty to you is released: to be merged
With Lethe, - hardly alive
In the babble of the silveryflowing willows.
Willowy silveryletheal splash
Crying... Into the blindflowing crypt
Of memories - exhausted - hide
In the willowy silveryletheal cry.
On the shoulders - a silvery-gray-haired raincoat
Old men’s, silvery-dry ivy
On the shoulders - exhausted - lay down,
Lade blindletheal gloom
Poppies...
- For red color
Grows old, for purple – is greying
In memory, for having drunk all -
By dryness I flow.
By matte: of the veins
Thrifts, young sibyls’
Blindness, head languors
Grayness: of lead.
To Life.
You will not take my ruddy cheeks -
Strong - as floods of the rivers!
You're the hunter, but I won't give in,
You're a pursuit, but I will run.
You will not take my soul alive!
So, at a full gallop, being pursued -
Bending down - and the jugular
Biting off a horse
Arabian.
2.
You will not take my soul alive
Not giving in as fluffy down.
Life, you often rhyme with: a lie,-
for faultless is the singer's hearing!
Conceived not by the long-living me-thought!
Life, release me to the alien coasts!
Life, you obviously rhyme with fat:
Life: means - hold it! Life: is - pressing.
Cruelhard are the knives' handle-rings
Into their bone gets all eating rust!
Life: the knifes on which dances
the loving one.
- keeps me waiting for a knife!
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/zemnyje_primety.php
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/cycle_poems/zizni.php
N.N.V
..never allow your passions
step outside the threshold of your will
- but Allah is wiser..
(A thousand and one nights)
1.
Greater silent roads,
Greater silent steps...
Soul as a stone into the water -
With all the extending circles...
That water - deep, that is dark - the water...
Soul for all centuries - buried in the breast.
And so I need to get it therefrom,
And so I want to say: go to mine!
2.
The whole ocean needs the whole sky
The soul needs all of god.
3.
" That is - contrary to all - England... "
Suddenly the air smells England - and the sea -
And valour. - Bold and stately.
- So, having met a new disaster,
I am laughing, as a junior sailor on a rope
Laughs in an hour of a great storm,
Alone with the anger of God.
In the blissful foolish monkey dance
Dancing above the foaming pharynx.
Those hands - persistent, the rope is strong
- has got used to a sea blizzard!
Valorous is the heart - however,
Not all have got to die in bed!
And here, all cold of the starless darkness
Having inhaled - on the mast - at the very edge -
Above the breaching chasm
- laughing still! - the eyelashes I lower...
4.
Time for us is an hour or so.
Further – eternity without one another!
And in a sandbox – the sand -
Will inevitably flow away!
What attracts me to you -
Not at all is your merit!
Simply fear that the rose of the cheeks -
Would fade away too soon.
Have you learned on the sundial
Monastic – what is time?
On heavenly on the weights -
Have you ever weighed – an hour?
For constellations and for us -
The same hour – one - for all.
Do not want it to have withered -
This hour!
Only an hour or so
From eternity I have stolen.
Only hour - for.........
All love.
My is all sin, mine is - all penalty.
And both of us - will cover -
The sand.
6.
" - but you never go by my house... "
My way does not go past your house.
My way does not lay past to anybody's house.
Nevertheless, from the way I often get off,
(Especially in the spring!)
Nevertheless, by people I toil,
As a dog under the moon.
Desired everywhere a guest!
All whom I do not let sleep!
With the grandfather I play the bones,
With the grandson - I sing.
Of me they are not jealous, the wives:
I am - just a voice and a sight.
And to me not one enamoured
Has not dedicated any chambers.
Those are just funny, merchants,
Your unbidden generosities!
I erect myself through a night-
And the bridges and the palaces.
(And to what I speak, do not listen!
All is nonsense - the girly one!)
I shall destroy my creation
In the morning myself.
Mansions - as a sheaf of straw - nothing!
My way does not lay past of the house - yours.
7.
The eyes of the sympathizing neighbour,
Equal, measured steps of old women.
In the hands which are hanging down
As a branch - divine indifference.
A young man has tired to rattle
From the tribune - all lightnings are done. -
Only occasionally on the forehead my young
Words fall - as heavy drops.
The moon looks as linen rags
Along the chambers that seem like a smoke.
- so good feels to be under the moon -
With the unloving, unloved one.
8.
" Day - for work, evening - for conversation, and it is necessary to sleep at nights’.
No, it’s easier to give up life, than an hour
Of this blissful fog!
You order me - the only order! -
To sleep and wake up - early.
Perhaps, shouldn’t see even dreams
When the eyes I close
Isn’t it easier then – to close
Them by your own hand?*
(*As one does for the dead).
But I am afraid that won’t sleep even then
The eyes in a coffin – by the lawful deadly dream.
Leave me alone. And release again:
The baby owl – to the night,
The sleepless - to the sleepless.
10.
At poor wasting me
You look not wasting words.
You're - stone, and I just sing,
You're - a monument, and I fly.
I know that the most tender May
Before the eyes of Eternity -
Insignificant.
But a bird I am - and you reckon
With that that the lightest laws
Should better suit me.
11.
When pushed away into your chest,
Hope that the legs - will stand up!
And knock again to somebody's doors,
So that to deceive the evening.
...........from the masts height
Throw them only pearls and roses.
....., for friends, they need -
Verses only, not my tears.
12.
You who have told to all the passions: so long -
So long you too.
Bitterness is swallowed thoroughly.
As a whipping bible verse,
I read in your eyes:
"Evil passion!"
In the hands bringing food
You read - flattery.
And my laughter - jealousy of all hearts! -
As the bell of the leprous -
Rattles to you.
And, in how into your hands the pick
You suddenly pick - so that the hands
To not take (they are all the same, the flowers, aren’t they really?),
So, is clear to me - up to darkness in the eyes!-
That there was not in your herds
The blacker - a sheep.
There is an island – by clemency of the Father,-
Where there is no need for any bells,
Where the black down -
Along every fence. - Yes.-
There are in the world - black herds.
Other shepherd.
13.
Yeah, the sighes about me - the virgin land!
And maybe - it's easier to be cursed!
And maybe - the gipsy patches -
Humbly - mine
Are not lesser than unmixed gold,
Than the flaring by all the whites armour
Before the face of a judge.
The duty of a dancer - not tremble on the rope,
The duty of a dancer - forget that has known once -
Other substance
Than air - under the legs having the wings!
Leave him alone. He's as well as you
A herald of his own Lord.
14.
Don't judge me hastily:
The earthly court is vain!
And by pigeon's - do not blacken
The young daw - by whiteness.
Well, you can if not lazy
But still having loved them all,
Perhaps, I'll wake up whiter
Than you in the final day!
15.
" I do not want - I can not - and I am not able to harm you... "
So from the house chased out by melancholy,
- By you! – by all memory, all thirst,
All passion – just to forget! - as the sea tide,
I rush along all the bayonets, bags and citizens.
O, foamy high sea shaft
Along the stone soviet Povarskaya!
I bend above the dozing hound - and suddenly -
Your eyes! - all hands on the icons -
Yours! – Oh, if you were without eyes, without hands,
So that to not remember them, to not remember them, to not!
And, in an attack, as if by a quick wave,
I take the castles of puzzling houses.
I’ve kissed all in a turn.
Hang in a window. - Moscow in a circle spacious.
In fact, all Moscow loves me! - and here is yours,
The house...
I laugh and laugh and laugh with the clamped throat.
The five years old, having chewed millet:
- " Without you it’s boring, and with you it is all funny "...
So, wattled up by a wreath of children,
As through a dream – the words: " I am afraid, under the root cuts-
The Pole... Well? - Well what? - Are there any news? "
- " Nothing so far, - Why, yes: that he doesn't love me! "
And, by the remark having amazed the husband,
I go to the wife – to listen how a friend is jealous.
Verses - flowers - (And who does not give them
To me for verses?), in hands - the whole blizzard!
The shadow creeps on the houses. - Forward! Forward!
Along the human circus circle.
Exhausting thus the bad memory in the end, -
I wish to not regain the consciousness at all!
So I run from you, as from the Plague,
Along all Moscow - ....... Long-legged
To turn and turn and turn, up until the dark -
And finally at the threshold holding the breath …
To stop
- And enter into the house only to find - again!
16.
Adored and adoring,
Dreams seeing in the broad daylight,
All I have been seen - sleeping,
Nobody sees me - sleepy.
So all day long
Dreams float before the eyes,
That at the night to lie to sleep - is bother.
And here I stand
Above the sleeping friends
A grieving shadow.
17.
Having been nailed to the pillory
Of the ancient slavic conscience,
With a snake in the heart and the brand on the forehead,
I attest still, that - I'm innocent.
I approve that feel peace and rest
Of the confessor before a confession.
Is it my fault that I stand by the market places
With a hand stretched out for happiness.
Look and count all my goods,
Tell me - or have I gone blind? -
Where is my gold? Where is the silver?
In my hand -
Only a handful of the ashes!
And this is all what by flattery and entreaty
I have elicited from the happy.
And this is all what I shall take with me
To the country of silent kisses.
18.
Having been nailed to the pillory,
I shall tell still that I love you.
That not any mother - true to the deep nethers -
At her own child would look that way.
That for you who is busy fighting,
Not to die I want, but keep dying.
You won't understand, - my words are too small!-
How is it not enough for me a pillory!
That, if a banner to me would entrust a battalion,
And suddenly you were to stand before the eyes -
With another one in your hand -
Having hardened as a column,
My hand would have let out the banner...
And this last honour having trampled too
Beneath your legs, beneath the grass.
By your own hand to the pillory
Having been nailed - as a birch on a meadow
That pillar rises for me, and not the roar of the crowds -
That's the doves coo in the early morning...
Having given up everything, this black column
I shall not give up - for the red nimbus of Rouen!
19.
You wanted so. - So be it. - Halleluia.
I kiss the slapping hand.
Have been pushed away - I pull to the breast,
So that, surprised, to hear - silence.
And afterwards, with a smile indifferent:
- My child becomes obedient!
Not the first day, but many centuries
I pull you to the chest, by a hand
Monastic - calm and cold, up to the heat!-
Hand - of Heloise! - Abelyard.
In the thunder cathedral - to death to beat!-
You, the flied up as white lightning scourge!
21.
And won't rescue neither stanzas nor constellations.
And so it's called - revenge
For that each time,
My back unbending upon the stubborn line,
I've been looking for, above the forehead spacious,
Stars only, not the eyes.
So that, as a monarch having recognized you on belief,
- Ah, every instant, fine Eros, spent without you
Was not to me too empty!
That, at the night, in solemn fogs,
I searched at my tender lips ruddy -
Rhymes only, not the lips.
Punishment for that that to the most malicious judges
I was - as a snow, that here, under the left breast -
Eternal apotheosis!
That in a tete-a-tete with the young East
I seeked on my forehead high
Dawns only, not the roses!
23.
Who is created from stone, who is created from clay,-
And I sparkle by silver sparkles!
My business - is change, my name is - Marina,
And I am - just passing sea foam.
Who is created from clay, who is created from flesh -
To them - a coffin and tombstones...
- In the sea I am christened - and in my flight
I experience - incessantly - always - breakage!
Through each heart, through all nets
I will make it my way.
Me - you see curls dissolute these? -
You can't make me salt of the earth.
Being split up about the granite of your knees,
I will, with each wave - revive!
Long live the foam - the cheerful foam -
The high foam of the sea!
24.
Take away everything, I need nothing.
And take it out in..................
As behind the lattice of a pink garden
Once did God - by his hand - to that woman.
Take everything that I did not buy:
Here, this....., and that...., and a notebook.
I, all the same - from such a mountain have fallen,
That never would have to live to collect!
Yes, it's a pity to me, that so without glories
I have lived, in such a deep dream,-
Like a blind puppy! - pushing me off into the crevice,
You would do only good to me.
And instead of that one who was as........
As the waves of roaring squares and universes -
To you a little glory will be granted - this:
That because of you...... - a new hill.
25. (The death of a dancer)
I see the guests room,
White walls and the shine of silks.
Through all that - a track enormous -
- All black - to you, an alcove.
In the head - an armour fighting.
I see: a fan and a rope.
- And your glassy eyes
Which were reflecting the sunset.
26.
I'm not dancing, - and it's not my fault
That the pink dress has gone all waves.
But suddenly both the hands
outwitted, covered, caught - the wind.
Silent is, the sly fellow. -
Only there around the knees,
Hardly-hardly in the edges trembling. - Caught!
O, if only I could constrain so the Whim,
As all excited by the wind dress!
27.
By the eyes of a captivated witch
I look at the God's child forbidden.
Since the soul was granted to me
Have become I all silent and meek.
Have forgotten, a seagull above the river,
All the night long groans under the windows.
In a white cap I go now - a housewife
Go all stately and blue-eyed.
Even the rings have gotten dimmer,
The arm in the sun - as a deadman in a cocoon.
So salty is my bread, that doesn't go through the mouth,-
And the table salt lays there untouched...
***
Joy of all the innocent eyes,
- A surprise to all! -
To this world I was born -
To be happy!
Tender all to be until no strength,
....................
Only by memory has confused
God - goddess.
I remember all ribbons on all
The children's hats,
Each rung out laughter,
Each smell.
Each sail in the distance is
Alive – to make me suffer…
Every one in the hand
I remember the hand.
Everyone one on them the rings
- If you would have known! -
I remember each face seen off
At the station.
All the farewells at the gate.
All that once...
Not kissed mouths -
I remember - each!
All the people’s names,
All those of dog’s...
- I am loyal in my own way,
Not otherwise.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/radost_wseh.php
Separation
5.
Quietly
By the hand cautious and thin
I shall untangle the bands:
Little hands - and to the neighs
Obedient, will sound away the rustle of the amazon
On the sonorous, empty stairs of separation.
Steps and neighs
In the lighted up flight
Winged. - in the eyes - the fire of the dawn.
Little hands!
Vainly you call:
Behind her - the streaming staircase of Lethe.
To the bush.
1.
What is it, what it wants, a bush, from me?
Not speeches, perhaps! Nor my fate of a dog,
Human's life and fate cursing
The same shrub into which - the head I hide
(Growing grey - with each day!).
This power, and this thickets, and the grounds -
What it needs, the bush - from me?
The richer one - from deprived!
And it clearly needs something! Otherwise wouldn't come
into the eyes, in the thoughts, and the ears.
Wouldn't have needed something - would not blossom
To me directly into the open soul.
That only for the bush is not empty:
The window of all my barren fields!
What, a full bowl of a bush,
You find on this - place void?
What did you forget (on the branches
Yours - a leaf is not identical!)
In all my stops, periods' stubs,
Continuous sighs and commas?
What have you not heard (on your branches
The rumours are not born in torment!),
In my parentheses' stumps,
Continuous commas' sounds?
Yes, here and now, to the dictionary
Having given immortal forces,-
As if I speak what I knew,
As if having opened the mouth
I knew it on just the border of the lips
Behind which there are only splinters...
And again which, in its all completeness,
I shall know when I'll become all quiet.
2.
And me from the bush - do not rustle
For a minute, the world of humans!-
And me from the bush - quietness:
That one, - between silence and speech.
That one - you can call it - nothing,
Or you can name it - all: it is deep, inescapable.
Indistinctness! Our poems'
Posthumous - marvellous uncertainties.
Uncertainty of old gardens,
Uncertainty of new music,
Uncertainty of the first syllables,
Uncertainty of Faust, the Second.
That silence that is before or after all.
Rumble of the multitude going to the forum.
Well - the noise in the ear into which
All the noises get incorporated.
As if all the jugs of The East -
Onto the hill of the forehead.
Such silence I need from the shrub,
Fuller than that can't express: the fullest full.
***
How many of them already had fallen into that chasm
Erupted in the distance!
There'll come a day when I, too, shall disappear
From the surface of the earth.
Will stunned be all what once have sung and struggled,
What once have been shining and torn.
The greens of my eyes, gentle voice,
And gold of the hair.
The life will go on with its ever daily bread,
Forgetfulness of the days.
There never have been me!
Changeable as children in each of the face mimics
And so not for long malicious,
Who loved the hour when firewood in the fireplace
Becomes the ashes.
Violoncello, and cavalcades in a thicket,
And a bell in the village...
- Me, such alive and present,
On the sweat and lovely earth!
To all of you - what's to me who haven't known the limits,
Who are mine and alien?! -
I address with the demand of faith
And a request of love.
Both, day and night, in writing and in a speech:
For the blatant truth of all the yes and noes,
For that I've been so often feeling - sad
For that I'm only twenty yet,
For that that to me it's direct inevitability -
To pardon the insults,
For all my impetuous tenderness
And too highly proud bearing,
For the speed of prompt events,
For reality, for game...
- Listen! - love me else
For that that I shall die.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/urzskolkoihupalo.php
Podruga
..... What from me will remain
In your heart, wandereress?
On July, 14th 1915
17
Remember: of all the goals to me is dearer
A hair thread from my head.
And just pass me by, go by yourself... - you too,
Both you too, and you.
Stop loving me, all, stop loving!
Guard not me in the early morning!
So that there I could stand alone
All by myself on the wind.
6 мая 1915
Pity
- He was your husband? – He's not.
Do you believe in Resurrection? - No.
- So what then?
So what for the bows you beat?
- Wanted to go -
Into the heart – as if by a fist, impact:
Suddenly, what if he’s scared -
To be alone?
- I do not understand!
He’s not your husband? – He’s not.
- Do you believe in Resurrection? - No.
- Decay and mold?
- Decay and mold.
- So spit on it and forget!
There are many more alive on the marketplace!
- Without the feather bed
Wouldn't he catch a cold! Like a prisoner-
Inmate or what - on the boards!
It's hard!
- Devils!
He’s dead!
By the finger into the eye split -
Wouldn’t blink!
Dog! Stinks!
- Don’t be angry,
You see - sweat
On the temple has not dried up yet.
What if someone else the bows in the letters
send, a shirt sews still for him...
- Is he your husband? – He’s not.
- Do you believe in Resurrection? - No.
- Then what!-... A bib knits...
Let me now, I’ll lie beside ...
Dri – ve – the - nails - in!
December 1920
1999, October - 2004, March - 2006, May - December, 2008
Laura's Marina Tsvetaeva homepage
Poem of the End
Poem of the Hill
Andrey Kneller's Marina Tsvetaeva homepage
Translations from Mongolian
With a temple stone
Issa