Marina Tsvetaeva’s 1921 poem cycle, translated from the Russian by Seraphina Powell
I want to speak—what was my thought?
I wanted to shelter with him from the rain
under a single shared cloak;
to sleep through the night beside him
under a single shared tent;
beside him, and in the coffin as well,
under a single shared shroud.
1
To be your favorite, your fair-haired boy,
to be remembered thus through all time to come;
to wear the rough cloak of a strict disciple,
to wander wherever,
following the dust-dulled purple
of your unacknowledged royalty;
to listen for your every holy word
from across the dense humanity
crowded ’round to hear you,
to struggle to catch every phrase you breathe,
desperately as one does to catch one’s own breath;
to be revived by the holy spirit
moving through you
that lifts my soul, if only for an instant,
as the wind does my cloak,
making it flutter with its own equivocal life;
to shoulder open a path for you,
pushing proud through the crowd
as if it were I who had a claim
to be King David’s heir;
to be the cloak interposed
between you and every affront,
and any offense from earthly person;
to be among your snoring disciples,
the sole one awake in all that sleep;
against the first angry mob-thrown stone
to serve you, now no cloak—but as your shield!
That last long dash
interrupting my utterance,
signifies how much I mean,
my phrases are stacatto’d short
by a blade too sharp to be played with—
and at last to have maniacally smiled,
then been the first to climb,
beside you, to share your pyre.
2
There comes to one a certain hour
when we rise above our pride, cast it aside
like baggage we’ve carried long enough.
The hour one becomes a disciple—
exalted hour, coming but once,
the hour when you can’t evade your own triumph,
when there’s no place to hide from God but in God..
You’ve set down your weapons
at the feet of the one who was pointed out:
the indicating finger insisted,
you didn’t resist. You traded warrior’s glory
for a nomad’s camel,
set sail upon a different kind sea:
the unmapped sands of prophetic desert.
This high hour summons not to action
but to deeds, it calls with exalting voice;
this hour extricates from all the hours
that made up your self-willed days.
This is the hour that makes you bend
as the grain’s ripe ear bends—
beneath its own weight.
The harvest is ready. The hour sounds,
the wheat is eager to feel the millstone.
The Law, the Law! God’s given Torah!
(I eagerly accepted this spiritual yoke
while yet I slept in my mother’s womb;
it called, I longed, while yet in her body,
to embody this, to feel it shape my clay.)
This is the hour of consecration,
The world you’ve seen, considered ,wholly known,
appears in so different a light; now’s your time,
while dawn’s yet flaring its early first.
Abruptly comes the holy hour
when you, the disciple, chosen, choose
utmost loneliness!
3
Setting sun, good and kind,
without the noon cruelty
of the mid-day one
who’d rather scorch than warm.
Evening sun, sun from afar,
like the star that you are,
sun of nearly night,
grandfatherly, kind and wise,
sun that’s long since learned
to show mercy to our eyes,
simply, easily, straightforwardly royal,
eerily approachable,
evening sun, more beloved sun
to the one who sings you this hymn.
* * *
“And there was darkness over all the earth,”
—that’s what happens when a god’s crucified,
dying on high, as you do each eventide.
Sun overthrown, dethroned by the blackness,
the gathering rabble of shadows,
never forget who you are, be Phoebus!
The setting sun’s last glances aren’t cast down the vale,
his last gaze blazes straight up, lighting sky.
Let not your last gilding look linger
on such belfries as just happen to be around,
let mine be the last bell tower
to feel the soft power,
the alchemy of your setting rays.
4
The freight of day
sinks at last beneath the waves.
Two eternal friends
slowly, calmly, climb a hill,
so close together
that from a distance you’d think them one.
Mounting, wordless, shoulder to shoulder,
sharing a single cloak,
even taking their breaths together,
these two, as one, will rouse
tomorrows wars, which now are sleeping,
as they, standing together, sustained yesterday’s,
like a single, impassive, dark, two-turreted tower.
Wise as serpents
and harmless as doves . . .
“Father, take us back
into your infinite being!”
Clouds cross the sky like smoke
from battling celestial armies.
Their shared cloak flutters
as though lifted by the wind
of their shared spirit, by their sigh;
in their gaze earnestly alternates
prayer’s soft imploring light
and restrained impatience . . .
“O Father, receive us into your evening,
recover us in your paternal night.”
The heat-stunned desert breathes again,
rejoices that night’s coming.
Descending heavily,
carefully pondered,
comes the ponderous, satisfying answer,
sweet and heavy as the fall of ripe fruit,
the heard word, “O my child!”
The human herds are quiet,
gathered back in their barns;
on a sunset gilded hill:
they too, these two—at peace.
5
Perfect, miraculous moment,
like a glimpse of the ancient world—
I remember watching them climb the hill,
how they mounted, side by side.
Their speech poured down in wondrous
interlacing waves, like streams
washing down a mountainside,
while the cloak enfolding them spilled
from their shoulders with undulant,
inevitable grace.
Above the above, from higher than high:
came evening beams which turned them to gold,
and their words turned the world into dreams
with a meaning that dawned upon us,
more gorgeous than sunset.
6
To Thee, all the fanfaring splendor
of trumpets is no more
than the inarticulate whisper
of wind in the grass;
to Thee, the roaring glory of storms
is as the chirping of birds,
the beating of whose wings
has as much magnificence
and as little significance
as our heartbeats hastened
by the pressure of the past—
the century-heavy terror of time—
the horror of history.
7
Up and down the dark rondure of the hills,
under suns whitening the ways to dust,
with gentle tread, obedient, meek,
ever following your red and ragged cloak;
over dull, ungenerous, sandy landscape
the color of rust,
thirsting under burning beams,
with gently tread, obedient, meek,
eyes on your cloak, placing
my feet in your tracks;
over rough and swollen waves,
under the eternal anger of the sun,
with gentle tread, obedient, meek,
following the lead of your lying,
worthless, red and ragged cloak.