From: IN THE INMOST HOUR OF THE SOUL. Selected Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva.
Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman (Humana Press, 1989), 107 pp.
ISBN#: 0-89603-137-3

MARINA TSVETAEVA (1892-1941)

 You, rushing past on your streets
 To some dubious magic you've tasted,
 If only you knew how much heat,
 How much lifeblood I've already wasted,

 How much heroic passion I threw
 At a random shadow or rustling...
 How each time my heart flamed anew
 And spent its powder for nothing.

 Oh, trains flying into the night,
 Making off with the sleep of the station...
 But I know nevertheless that you might
 Never answer--if you heard it--the question:

 Why are my words so strong and so sharp
 To my cigaret's perpetual smolder.
 How much gloom and imperiling dark
 In the light-haired head on my shoulders.

    1913

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After a sleepless night my body grows weaker,
Becomes sweet and no one's - no longer mine.
In the slow veins arrows still flicker,
And like a seraph, I smile at passers-by.

After a sleepless night my arms grow languid;
Friend or foe, my indifference is complete.
A full rainbow unfolds from a chance sound
And the scent of Florence stuns in a frozen street.

My lips lighten tenderly, shadows golden
Round my sunken eyes. It is the night that lit
This luminous face. And when the dark night's over,
Only our eyes stay darkened, that is all.

 19 July 1916
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  I'm not an impostor, for I came home.
  I am not a maid: I do not ask for bread.
  I am your passion, your Sunday rest,
  Your seventh day, your seventh heaven.

  There, on earth, they gave me nothing
  And hung millstones around my neck.
  --Don't you recognize me, beloved?
  I am your swallow: Psyche.

   April  1918
_________________________________________________

 Words are inscribed in the black sky,
 And the beautiful eyes go blind...
 And the deathbed is no longer terrible,
 And the lovebed is no longer sweet.

 Sweat from writing--sweat from ploughing.
 We know another ardor:
 Weightless fire dancing round the curls--
 The breeze of inspiration.

  14 May 1918
___________________________________________________________


 I am. You shall be. Between us is a chasm.
 I drink. You thirst. All talk is futile.
 Ten years--a hundred thousand years
 Part us. God does not build bridges.

 Be--That is my commandment. Let me pass
 And not disturb your growth with my breath.
 I am. You shall be. In ten years' time
 You'll say: I am--I'll say: I was.

 24 May 1918

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