I'd like to live with You
In a small town,
Where there are eternal twilights
And eternal bells.
And in a small village inn—
The faint chime
Of ancient clocks—like droplets of time.
And sometimes, in the evenings, from some garret—
A flute,
And the flautist himself in the window.
And big tulips in the window-sills.
And maybe, You would not even love me . . .

In the middle of the room—a huge tiled oven,
On each tile—a small picture:
A rose—a heart—a ship.—
And in the one window—
Snow, snow, snow.

You would lie—thus I love You: idle,
Indifferent, carefree.
Now and then the sharp strike
Of a match.

The cigarette glows and burns down,
And trembles for a long, long time on its edge
In a grey brief pillar—of ash.
You're too lazy even to flick it—
And the whole cigarette flies into the fire.

December 10, 1916

I want to force from the mirror,
Where there is murk and a misting dream—
Where the path lies for You
And where is the haven.

I see: the mast of a ship,
And You—at the deck . . .
You—in the smoke of a train . . . A field
In the evening plaint . . .

Evening fields in the dew,
Above them—ravens . . .
—I bless You to all
The four regions!

May 3, 1915
(from Woman Friend, written for Parnok)

It's time to take off amber,
It's time to change lexicons,
It's time to put out the lantern
Above the door . . .

February, 1941.

Life comes not with clamor and thunder,
But so: snow is falling,
Lamps glow, someone's come up
To the house.
The bell blazed—a long spark.
He entered. Gazed.
In the house it's totally quiet.
The icons glow.

1915

In a red cluster
The rowan tree blazed.
The leaves were falling,
I was born.

Hundreds of bells
Were quarreling.
The day was Saturday:
John the Divine.

Even now
I feel like nibbling at
The fiery rowan's
bitter branch.

August 16, 1916

As soon as I close burning eyelids—
Paradise roses, paradise rivers . . .

Somewhere afar,
As in a dream-state
The tender words
Of the paradise snake.

And, Sorrowful Eve,
I recognize
The Kingly Tree
In paradise' round.

January 20, 1917

The bus jumped, like a brazen

evil spirit, a demon

cutting across the traffic

in streets as cramped as footnotes,

it rushed on its way shaking

like a concert-hall vibrating

with applause. And we shook in it!

Demons too. Have you seen

seeds under a tap? We were

like peas in boiling soup,

or Easter toys dancing in

alcohol. Mortared grain!

Teeth in a chilled mouth.

Easter toys: on Palm Sunday most Russian towns held markets at which sweets, trinkets, and small devils and cherubim were commonly sold.

What has been shaken out someone

could use for a chandelier:

all the beads and the bones

of an old woman. A necklace

on that girl's breast. Bouncing.

The child at his mother's nipple.

Shaken without reference

like pears all of us shaken

in vibrato, like violins.

The violence shook our souls

into laughter, and back into childhood.

Young again. Yes. The joy of that

being thrown into girlhood! Or

perhaps further back, to become

a tomboy with toothy grin.

It was as if the piper

had lead us, not out of town, but

right out of the calendar.

Laughter exhausted us all.

I was too weak to stand.

Enfeebled, I kept on my feet only

by holding your belt in my hand.

Askew, head on, the bus was

crazed like a bull, it leapt

as if at a red cloth,

to rush round a sharp bend

and then, quite suddenly

stopped.

...So, between hills, the creature

Lay obedient and still.

Lord, what blue surrounded us,

how everywhere was green!

The hurt of living gone,

like January's tin.

Green was everywhere,

a strange and tender green.

A moist, uneasy noise of green

flowed through our veins' gutters.

Green struck my head open,

and freed me from all thinking!

A moist, wood-twig smoke of green: although this verse appears to be another draft of the previous one, both appear in the Moscow-Leningrad edition.

A moist, wood-twig smoke of green

flowed through our vein's gutters.

Green struck my head open.

It overflowed me completely!

Inside me, warmth and birdsong.

You could drink both of them from

the two halves of my skull—

(Slavs did that with enemies).

Green rose, green shoots, green

fused to a single emerald.

The green smell of the earth had

struck deeply. (No buffalo feels that.)

Malachite. Sapphire. Unneeded.

The eye and ear restored—

Falcons don't see tillage,

prisoners don't hear birds.

My eye is ripe with green.

Now I see no misfortune

(or madness—it was true reason!)

to leave a throne and fall

on all fours like a beast

and dig his nose in the grass...

He wasn't mad, that sovereign

Nebuchadnezzar, munching

Nebuchadnezzar: cf Daniel, 4:31-3

stalks of grass—but a Tsar,

an herbivorous, cereal-loving brother

of Jean-Jacques Rousseau...

This green of the earth has given

my legs the power to run

into heaven.

I've taken in so much

green juice and energy I am

as powerful as a hero.

The green of the earth has struck

my cheeks. And there it glows,

For an hour, under cherry trees,

God allowed me to think

that my own, my old, face

could be the same colour as these.

Young people may laugh. Perhaps

I'd be better off standing under

some old tower, than mistaking

that cherry-tree colour

for the colour of my

face...

With grey hair like mine? But then,

apple blossom is grey. And God has brought me close

to everyone of his creatures

I am closer as well as lower...

a sister to all creation

from the buttercup to the mare—

So I blew in my hands, like a trumpet.

I even dared to leap!

As old people rejoice

without shame on a roundabout,

I believed my hair was brown

again, no grey streak in it.

So, with my branch of green

I could drive my friend like a goose,

and watch his sail-cloth suit

turn into true sails—

Surely my soul was prepared

to sail beyond the ocean.

(The earth had been a seabed—

it laughed now with vegetation.)

My companion was only slender

in the waist. His heart was thick.

(How his white canvas puckered,

and came to rest in the green.)

Faith. Aurora. Soul's blue.

Never dilute or measured.

Idiot soul! And yet Peru

will yield to the madness of it!

My friend became heavy to lead,

as a child does for no reason,

(I found my own bold web

as lovely as any spider's)

Suddenly like a vast frame

for a living miracle: Gates!

Between their marble, I could

stand, like an ancient sign,

uniting myself and the landscape;

a frame in which I remain,

between gates that lead to no castle,

gates that lead to no farmhouse.

gates like a lion's jaws

which let in light. Gates

leading to where? Into

happiness came the answer,

twofold...

Happiness? Far away. North of here.

Somewhere else. Some other time.

Happiness? Even the scent is cold.

I looked for it once, on all fours.

When I was four years old, looking

for a clover with four leaves.

What do these numbers matter?

Happiness? Cows feed on it.

The young are in ruminant company

of two jaws and four hooves.

Happiness stamps its feet.

It doesn't stand looking at gates.

The wood block and the well.

Remember that old tale?

Of cold water streaming

past an open, longing mouth,

and the water missing the mouth

as if in a strange dream.

There's never enough water,

(the sea's not enough for me),

From opened veins, water

flows on to moist earth—

Water keeps passing by

as life does, in a dream.

And now I've wiped my cheeks

I know the exact force

of the streams that miss my hands

and pass my thirsting

mouth

The tree, in its cloud of blossom,

was a dream avalanche over us.

With a smile, my companion compared it

to a 'cauliflower in white sauce'.

That phrase struck into my heart,

loud as thunder. Now grant me encounters

with thieves and pillagers, Lord, rather

than bed in the hay with a gourmandl!

A thief can rob—and not touch your face.

You'll be fleeced, but your soul will escape.

But a gourmand must finger and pinch, before

he puts you aside, to eat later.

I can throw off my rings. Or my fingers.

You can strip my hide, and wear it.

But a gourmand demands the brain and heart

to the last groan of their torment.

The thief will go off. In his pockets

my jewels, the cross from my breast.

A toothbrush ends all romance

with gourmands.

Don't fall in their hands!

thief: there is multiple punning on the idea of pillaging as a form of (literal) 'ripping-off, or fleecing, throughout the passage.

And you, who could be loved royally

as an evergreen, shall be

as nameless as cauliflower in my mouth:

I take this revenge—for the tree!

1934-6

From Chapter 1

Hamelin, the good-mannered

town of window-boxes,

well-stocked with

warehouses

Paradise Town!

How God must love

these sensible

townspeople. Every one

is righteous:

Goody-goody, always-right, always-provided-for,

stocked-up-in-time. It's Paradise Town!

Here are no riddles.

All is smooth and peaceable.

Only good habits in

Paradise

Town.

In God's sweet

backwater

(The Devil turns his

nose up here):

It's goody-goody Paradise (owned by Schmidt and Mayers).

A town for an Emperor. Give way to your elders!

Everywhere is tranquil.

No fire. The whole place

must belong to Abel.

Isn't that

Paradise?

Those who are not

too cold or too hot

travel straight to Hamelin

straight into Hamelin:

Lullaby and ermine-down, this is Paradise Town!

Everywhere is good advice and go-to-sleep on time Town!

First watch!

First watch!

With the world all contact's lost!

Is the dog out? And the cat in?

Did you hear the early warning.

Take your servants out of harness

Shake your pipe—you've time for that—

but leave your workbench now because

'Morgen ist auch ein tag'

Ten to ten!

Ten to ten.

Put your woolly earplugs in.

In the desk with all your schoolbooks

Set your clocks to ring at five.

Shopkeeper, leave your chalk,

Housewife, your mending.

Look to your feather bed:

'Morgen is auch ein tag'

Ten o'clock.

Ten o'clock

No more interruptions.

Keys turned? Bolts drawn?

That was the third call.

Cl-o-ose your Bible, Dad.

Housewife, put your bonnet on.

Hus-band, your nightcap.

'Morgen ist..."

All asleep.

That's the Hameliners!

From Chapter 2

Dreams

In all other cities,

in mine, for instance, (out of bounds)

husbands see mermaids, and

wives dream of Byrons.

Children see devils,

and servants see horsemen.

But what can these, Morpheus,

citizens so sinless

dream of at night—Say what?

They don't need to think hard.

The husband sees—his wife!

The wife sees her husband!

The baby sees a teat.

And that beauty, fat of cheek,

sees a sock of her father's

that she's been darning.

The Cook tries the food out.

The 'Ober' gives his orders.

It's all as it ought to be,

all as it ought to be.

As stitches go smoothly

along a knitting needle

Peter sees Paul (what else?).

And Paul sees Peter.

A grandfather dreams of

grandchildren.

Journalists—of some full-stop!

The maid—a kind master.

Commandments for Kaspar.

A sermon for the Pastor.

To sleep has its uses,

it isn't really wasteful!

The sausage-maker dreams of

poods of fat sausages;

a judge of a pair of scales

(like the apothecary).

Teachers dream of canes.

A tailor of goods for sale.

And a dog of his bone?

Wrong! He sees his collar!

The Cook sees a plucked bird.

The laundress sees velveteen.

Just as it's been laid down

in the prescription.

And what of the Burgomeister?

Sleep is like waking or

once you are Burgomeister

what else can you dream about?

Except looking over

the citizens who serve you.

That's what the Burgomeister

sees: all his servants!

That's how things have to be!

That's how they are arranged!

That's the prescription!

That's the prescription!

(My tone may be playful—yes,

the old has some virtue)

So let us not use up

our rhymes over nothing.

As the Burgomeister sleeps, let's

slip into his room (Tsar

of Works and Constructions!)

How solidly the building stands...

It's worth our attention.

------------------------------

From The Children's Paradise

------------------------------

To live means—ageing,

turning grey relentlessly.

To live is—for those you hate!

Life has no eternal things.

In my kingdom: no butchers, no jails

Only ice there! Only blue there!

Under the roof of shivering waters

pearls the size of walnuts

girls wear and boys hunt.

There's—a bath—for everyone.

Pearls are a wondrous illness.

Fall asleep then. Sleep. And vanish.

Dry twigs are grey. Do you want

scarlet?—Try my coral branch!

In my kingdom: no mumps; no measles,

medieval history, serious matters,

no execution of Jan Hus. No discrimination.

No more need for childish terrors.

Only blue. And lovely Summer.

Time—for all things—without measure.

Softly, softly, children. You're

going to a quiet school—under the water.

Run with your rosy cheeks

into the eternal streams.

Someone: Chalk. Someone: Slime.

Someone calling: Got my feet wet.

Someone: Surge: Someone: Rumble.

Someone: Got a gulp of lake!

2

Diving boys and swimming girls

Look, the water's on their fingers.

Pearls are scattered for them!

The water's at their ankles,

sneaking up their little knees.

They cry: —Chrys—o—lite.

Red moss! Blue caves!

(Feet go deeper. Skies rise higher.)

Mirror boxes. Crystal halls. Something's

been left behind, something grows closer...

You're stuck up to the knees! Careful.

—Ah this chrys-o-prase!

The water is shoulder high on

little mice in schoolday clothes.

Little snub-nose, —higher,

higher now the water's at your throat.

It's sweeter than bed linen . . .

—Crystals! Crystals!

In my kingdom: (The flute sounds the gentlest dolce)

Time dwindles, eyes grow larger.

Is that a sea gull? or is it a baby's bonnet?

Legs grow heavy, hearts grow lighter.

Water reaches to the chin.

Mourn, friends and relatives!

Isn't this a fine palace

for the burgomeister's daughter?

Here are eternal dreams, woods without pathways.

The flute grows sweeter, hearts more quiet.

Follow without thinking. Listen. No need for thought!

The flute becomes sweeter still, hearts even quieter.

—Mutter. Don't call me in for supper...

Bu-u-bbles!

1925

I

A single post, a point of rusting

tin in the sky

marks the fated place we

move to, he and I

on time as death is

prompt strangely

too smooth the gesture of

his hat to me

menace at the edges of his

eyes his mouth tight

shut strangely too low is the

bow he makes tonight

on time? that false note in

his voice, what

is it the brain alerts to and the

heart drops at?

under that evil sky, that sign of

tin and rust.

Six o'clock. There he is waiting

by the post.

Now we kiss soundlessly, his

lips stiff as

hands are given to queens, or

dead people thus

round us the shoving elbows of

ordinary bustle

and strangely irksome rises the

screech of a whistle

howls like a dog screaming

angrier, longer: what

a nightmare strangeness life is

at death point

and that nightmare reached my waist

only last night

and now reaches the stars, it has

grown to its true height

crying silently love love until

—Has it gone

six, shall we go to the cinema?

I shout it! home!

2

And what have we come to?

tents of nomads

thunder and drawn swords over

our heads, some

terror we expect

listen houses

collapsing in the one

word: home.

It is the whine of a cossetted

child lost, it is the

noise a baby makes for

give and mine.

Brother in dissipation, cause

of this cold fever, you

hurry now to get home just

as men rush in leaving

like a horse jerking the

line rope down in the dust.

Is there even a building there?

Ten steps before us.

A house on the hill no higher a

house on the top of the hill and

a window under the roof is it

from the red sun alone

it is burning? or is it my life

which must begin again? how

simple poems are: it means I

must go out into the night

(and talk to

who shall I tell my sorrow

my horror greener than ice?

—You've been thinking too much.

A solemn answer: yes.

COMMENT

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'a window under the roof is it

from the red sun alone it is burning ?

This is a rephrasing of lines in a poem by Blok the last

stanza of which runs (translated literally):

What is tenderer than the moon, what is higher than sunset

twilights ?

Know for yourself, be silent, don't say it to your friends:

On the top floor, there, under the high roof,

A window, burning not from the red sun alone . . .

'who shall I tell my sorrow': words from the Psalter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3

And the embankment I hold

to water thick and solid as

if we had come to the hanging

gardens of Semiramis

to water a strip as colourless

as a slab for corpses

I am like a female singer holding

to her music. To this wall.

Blindly for you won't return

or listen, even if I bend to

the quencher of all thirst, I am

hanging at the gutter of a roof.

Lunatic. It is not the river

(I was born naiad) that makes me

shiver now, she was a hand I held

to, when you walked beside me, a lover

and faithful

The dead are faithful

though not to all in their cells; if

death lies on my left now,

it is at your side I feel it.

Now a shaft of astonishing light, and

laughter that cheap tambourine.

—You and I must have a talk. And

I shiver: let's be brave, shall we?

Semiramis: an Assyrian princess (c. 800 B.C.) famous for her hanging gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

4

A blonde mist, a wave of

gauze ruffles, of human

breathing, smoky exhalations

endless talk the smell of

what? of haste and filth

connivance shabby acts all

the secrets of business men

and ballroom powder.

Family men like bachelors

move in their rings like middle-aged boys

always joking always laughing, and

calculating, always calculating

large deals and little ones, they are

snout-deep in the feathers of some

business arrangement

and ballroom powder.

(I am half-turned away is this

our house? I am not mistress here)

Someone over his cheque book

another bends to a kid glove hand

a third works at a delicate foot

in patent leather furtively the smell

rises of marriage-broking and

ballroom powder.

In the window is the silver

bite of a tooth: it is the Star of Malta,

which is the sign of stroking of the love

that leads to pawing and to pinching.

(Yesterday's food perhaps but

nobody worries if it smells slightly)

of dirt, commercial tricks

and ballroom powder.

The chain is too short perhaps even

if it is not steel but platinum?

Look how their three chins shake

like cows munching their own veal

above their sugared necks

the devils swing on a gas lamp

smelling of business slumps

and another powder

made by Berthold Schwartz

genius

intercessor for people:

—You and I must have a talk

—Let's be brave, shall we?

Star of Malta: the emblem of a medieval knightly order.

powder of Berthold Schwartz: gunpowder.

5

I catch a movement of his

lips, but he won't

speak—You don't love me?

—Yes, but in torment

drained and driven to death

(He looks round like an eagle)

—You call this home? It's

in the heart.—What literature!

For love is flesh, it is a

flower flooded with blood.

Did you think it was just a

little chat across a table

a snatched hour and back home again

the way gentlemen and ladies

play at it? Either love is

—A shrine?

or else a scar.

A scar every servant and guest

can see (and I think silently:

love is a bow-string pulled

back to the point of breaking).

Love is a bond. That has snapped for

us our mouths and lives part

(I begged you not to put a

spell on me that holy hour

close on mountain heights of

passion memory is mist).

Yes, love is a matter of gifts

thrown in the fire, for nothing.

The shell-fish crack of his mouth

is pale, no chance of a smile:

—Love is a large bed.

—Or else an empty gulf.

Now his fingers begin to

beat, no mountains

move. Love is—

—Mine, yes.

I understand. And so?

The drum beat of his fingers

grows (scaffold and square)

—Let's go, he says. For me, let's

die, would be easier.

Enough cheap stuff rhymes

like railway hotel rooms, so:

—love means life although

the ancients had a different

name.

-Well?

A scrap

of handkerchief in a fist

like a fish. Shall we go? How,

bullet rail poison

death anyway, choose: I make no

plans. A Roman, you

survey the men still alive

like an eagle:
say goodbye.

6

I didn't want this, not

this (but listen, quietly,

to want is what bodies do

and now we are ghosts only).

And yet I didn't say it

though the time of the train is set

and the sorrowful honour of leaving

is a cup given to women

or perhaps in madness I

misheard you polite liar:

is this the bouquet that you give your

love, this blood-stained honour?

Is it? Sound follows

sound clearly: was it goodbye

you said? (as sweetly casual

as a handkerchief dropped without

thought) in this battle

you are Caesar (What an

insolent thrust, to put the

weapon of defeat, into my hand

like a trophy). It continues. To

sound in my ears. As I bow.

—Do you always pretend

to be forestalled in breaking?

Don't deny this, it

is a vengeance of Lovelace

a gesture that does you credit

while it lifts the flesh

Lovelace: the seducer hero of Richardson's novel, Clarissa.

from my bones. Laughter the laugh of

death. Moving. Without desire.

That is for others now

we are shadows to one another.

Hammer the last nail in

screw up the lead coffin.

—And now a last request.

—Of course. Then say nothing

about us to those who will

come after me. (The sick

on their stretchers talk of spring.)

—May I ask the same thing?

—Perhaps I should give you a ring?

—No. Your look is no longer open.

The stamp left on your heart

would be the ring on your hand.

'the stamp left on your heart/would be the ring on my hand':

Tsvetayeva alludes to the Song of Songs (8.6):

'Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm,

for love is strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave.'

So now without any scenes

I must swallow, silently, furtively.

—A book then ? No, you give those

to everyone, don't even write them

books. .

So now must be no

so now must be no

must be no crying

In wandering tribes of

fishermen brothers

drink without crying

dance without crying

their blood is hot, they

pay without crying

pearls in a glass

melt, as they run their

world without crying

Now I am going and this

Harlequin gives his

Pierrette a bone like

a piece of contempt

He throws her the honour

of ending the curtain, the last

word when one inch of lead in

the breast would be hotter and better

Cleaner. My teeth

press my lips. I can

stop myself crying

pressing the sharpness

into the softest

so/ without crying

so tribes of nomads

die without crying

burn without crying.

So tribes of fishermen

in ash and song can

hide their dead man.

7

And the embankment. The last one.

Finished. Separate, and hands apart

like neighbours avoiding one another. We

walk away from the river, from my

cries. Falling salts of mercury

I lick off without attention.

No great moon of Solomon

has been set for my tears in the skies.

A post. Why not beat my forehead to

blood on it? To smithereens! We are

like fellow criminals, fearing one

another. (The murdered thing is love.)

Don't say these are lovers? Going into

the night? Separately? To sleep with others?

You understand the future is up there?

he says. And I throw back my head.

To sleep! Like newly-weds over their mat!

To sleep! We can't fall into

step. And I plead miserably: take my

arm, we aren't convicts to walk like this.

Shock! It's as though his soul has touched

me as his arm leans on mine. The electric

current beats along feverish wiring,

and rips. He's leaned on my soul with his arm.

He holds me. Rainbows everywhere. What is more like a

rainbow than tears ? Rain, a curtain, denser

than beads. I don't know if such embankments can

end. But here is a bridge and

-Well then?

Here? (The hearse is ready.)

Peaceful his eyes

move upward: couldn't you see me home?

for the very last time.

8

Last bridge I won't

give up or take out my hand

this is the last bridge

the last bridging between

water and firm land:

and I am saving these

coins for death

for Charon, the price of Lethe

this shadow money

from my dark hand I press

soundlessly into

the shadowy darkness of his

shadow money it is

no gleam and tinkle in it

coins for shadows:

the dead have enough poppies

This bridge

Lovers for the most

part are without hope: passion

also is just

a bridge, a means of connection

It's warm: to nestle

close at your ribs, to move in

a visionary pause

towards nothing, beside nothing

no arms no legs

now, only the bone of my

side is alive where

it presses directly against you

life in that side

only, ear and echo is it: there

I stick like white to

egg yolk, or an eskimo to his fur

adhesive, pressing

joined to you: Siamese

twins are no nearer.

The woman you call mother

when she forgot

all things in motionless triumph

only to carry you:

she did not hold you closer.

Understand: we have

grown into one as we slept and

now I can't jump

because I can't let go your hand

and I won't be torn off

as I press close to you: this

bridge is no husband

but a lover: a just slipping past

our support: for the

river is fed with bodies!

I bite in like a tick

you must tear out my roots to be rid of me

like ivy like a tick

inhuman godless

to throw me away like a thing, when there is

no thing I ever prized

in this empty world of things.

Say this is only dream,

night still and afterwards morning

an express to Rome?

Granada? I won't know myself

as I push off

the Himalayas of bedclothes.

But this dark is deep:

now I warm you with my blood, listen

to this flesh.

It is far truer than poems.

If you are warm, who

will you go to tomorrow for that?

This is delirium,

please say this bridge cannot

end

as it ends.

9

Blatant as factory buildings,

as alert to a call

here is the sacred and sublingual

secret wives keep from husbands and

widows from friends, here is the full

story that Eve took from the tree:

I am no more than an animal that

someone has stabbed in the stomach.

Burning. As if the soul had been

torn away with the skin. Vanished like steam

through a hole is that well-known foolish

heresy called a soul.

That Christian leprosy:

steam: save that with your poultices.

There never was such a thing.

There was a body once, wanted to

live no longer wants to live.

Forgive me! I didn't mean it!

The shriek of torn entrails.

So prisoners sentenced to death wait

for the 4 a.m. firing squad.

At chess perhaps with a grin

they mock the corridor's eye.

Pawns in the game of chess:

someone is playing with us.

Who? Kind gods or? Thieves?

The peephole is filled with an

eye and the red corridor

clanks. Listen the latch lifts.

One drag on tobacco, then

spit, it's all over, spit,

along this paving of chess squares

is a direct path to the ditch

to blood. And the secret eye

the dormer eye of the moon.

And now, squinting sideways, how

far away you are already.

10

Closely, like one creature, we

start: there is our cafe!

There is our island, our shrine, where

in the morning, we people of the

rabble, a couple for a minute only,

conducted a morning service:

with things from country markets, sour

things seen through sleep or spring.

The coffee was nasty there

entirely made from oats, (and

with oats you can extinguish

caprice in fine race-horses).

There was no smell of Araby

Arcadia was in

that coffee.

But how she smiled at us

and sat us down by her,

sad and worldly in her wisdom

a grey-haired paramour.

Her smile was solicitous

(saying: you'll wither! live!),

it was a smile at madness and being

penniless, at yawns and love

and—this was the chief thing—

at laughter without reason

smiles with no deliberation

and our faces without wrinkles.

Most of all at youth

at passions out of this climate

blown in from some other place

flowing from some other source

into that dim cafe

(burnous and Tunis) where

she smiled at hope and flesh

under old-fashioned clothes.

(My dear friend I don't complain.

It's just another scar.)

To think how she saw us off,

that proprietress in her cap

stiff as a Dutch hat...

burnous: an Arab cloak.

Not quite remembering, not quite

understanding, we are led away from the festival—

along our street! no longer ours that

we walked many times, and no more shall.

Tomorrow the sun will rise in the West.

—And then David will break with Jehovah.

—What are we doing?—We are separating.

—That's a word that means nothing to me.

It's the most inhumanly senseless

of words: sep arating. (Am I one of a hundred?)

It is simply a word of four syllables and

behind their sound lies: emptiness.

Wait! Is it even correct in Serbian or

Croatian ? Is it a Czech whim, this word.

Sep aration! To sep arate!

It is insane unnatural

a sound to burst the eardrums, and spread out

far beyond the limits of longing itself.

Separation—the word is not in the Russian

language. Or the language of women. Or men.

Nor in the language of God. What are we—sheep?

To stare about us as we eat.

Separation—in what language is it,

when the meaning itself doesn't exist?

or even the sound! Well,—an empty one,

like the noise of a saw in your sleep perhaps.

Separation. That belongs to the school of

Khlebnikov's nightingale-groaning

Khlebnikov: a Russian Futurist poet.

swan-like...

so how does it happen?

Like a lake of water running dry.

Into air. I can feel our hands touching.

To separate. Is a shock of thunder

upon my head—oceans rushing into

a wooden house. This is Oceania's

furthest promontory. And the streets are steep.

To separate. That means to go downward

downhill the sighing sound of two

heavy soles and at last a hand receives

the nail in it. A logic that turns

everything over. To separate

means we have to become

single creatures again

we who had grown into one.

12

Dense as a horse mane is:

rain in our eyes. And hills.

We have passed the suburb.

Now we are out of town,

which is there but not for us.

Stepmother not mother.

Nowhere is lying ahead.

And here is where we fall.

A field with. A fence and.

Brother and sister. Standing.

Life is only a suburb:

so you must build elsewhere.

Ugh, what a lost cause

it is, ladies and gentlemen,

for the whole world is suburb:

Where are the real towns?

Rain rips at us madly.

We stand and break with each other.

In three months, these must be

the first moments of sharing.

Is it true, God, that you even

tried to borrow from Job?

Well, it didn't come off.

Still. We are. Outside town.

Beyond it! Understand? Outside!

That means we've passed the walls.

Life is a place where it's forbidden

to live. Like the Hebrew quarter.

And isn't it more worthy to

become an eternal Jew?

Anyone not a reptile

suffers the same pogrom.

Life is for converts only

Judases of all faiths.

Let's go to leprous islands

or hell anywhere only not

life which puts up with traitors, with

those who are sheep to butchers!

This paper which gives me the

right to live—I stamp. With my feet.

Stamp! for the shield of David.

Vengeance! for heaps of bodies

and they say after all (delicious) the

Jews didn't want to live!

Ghetto of the chosen. Beyond this

ditch. No mercy!

In this most Christian of worlds

all poets are Jews.

13

This is how they sharpen knives on a

stone, and sweep sawdust up with

brooms. Under my hands there is

something wet and furry.

Now where are those twin male

virtues: strength, dryness?

Here beneath my hand I can

feel tears. Not rain!

What temptations can still be

spoken of? Property is water.

Since I felt your diamond eyes under

my hands, flowing.

There is no more I can lose. We have

reached the end of ending.

And so I simply stroke, and

stroke. And stroke your face.

This is the kind of pride we have:

Marinkas are Polish girls.

Since now the eyes of an eagle weep

underneath these hands...

Can you be crying? My friend, my

—everything! Please forgive me!

How large and salty now is the

taste of that in my fist.

Male tears are—cruel! They

rise over my head! Weep,

there will soon be others to

heal any guilt towards me.

Marinka: diminutive of Marina, a common Polish name

(and well known to Russians from the princess in Pushkin's Boris Godunov).

Fish of identic-

al sea. A sweep upward! like

...any dead shells and any

lips upon lips.

In tears.

Wormwood

to taste.

—And tomorrow

when

I am awake?

14

A slope like a path for

sheep. With town noises.

Three trollops approaching.

They are laughing. At tears.

They are laughing the full noon of

their bellies shake, like waves!

They laugh at the

inappropriate

disgraceful, male

tears of yours, visible

through the rain like scars!

Like a shameful pearl on

the bronze of a warrior.

These first and last tears

pour them now—for me—

for your tears are pearls

that I wear in my crown.

And my eyes are not lowered.

I stare through the shower.

Yes, dolls of Venus

stare at me! because

This is a closer bond

than the transport of lying down.

The Song of Songs itself

gives place to our speech,

infamous birds as we are

Solomon bows to us, for

our simultaneous cries

are something more than a dream!

And into the hollow waves of

darkness—hunched and level-

without trace—in silence—

something sinks like a ship.

'The Poem of the End'

The fourteen poems of this cycle, some divided into two or three lyrics, are about the poet's meeting with her lover and their walk through Prague, or a part of that walk, during which they agree to end their relationship. Feelings, sensations, thoughts about feelings and sensations and about their situation, dominate the poem. External things come in fragmentarily and unobtrusively. As the poem becomes clear and effective only when one does notice what externally 'happens', a brief summary of the narrative element may be useful:

1. She meets him 'at the appointed place'. His behaviour is ominously polite.

2. She thinks of 'house' and 'home'.

3. They walk by the embankment of the river and, coming to a cafe, decide to go in and 'have a talk'.

4. They sit in the cafe, in an atmosphere of prostitution and commercial vulgarity.

5. They talk across the cafe table. He is nervous and she is going to cry. They decide to part.

6. They talk on. She finds herself starting to cry, and tries not to.

7. They go out and continue walking by the embankment.

8. They cross the bridge.

9. She cries; thinks about 'prison'.

10. They pass another cafe—which they used to frequent when they were in love. She thinks about 'separation'.

11-12. They walk further out of the city. She thinks about the concepts 'suburb' and 'out of town'. They go up a hill (which seems to be the 'mountain' of the preceding cycle) and look down over the city with its Jewish Quarter.

13. He weeps and she comforts him.

14. They come down hill again into the city. Prostitutes laugh at them. They part.

Comments by A. Livingstone

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!

'The Poem of the Mountain'

This and 'The Poem of the End' are about the end of a love affair which

Tsevtayeva had while living in Prague (1922-1925).

I

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 siezed 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

grain in the coldness of winter?

I remember lips half-opening to

mine, like the valves of a shell-creature

lost because of that grain, 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

abysses, 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 marketing 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.

Hagar: the slave and concubine of the patriarch Abraham, who bore him a son, Ishmael;

was sent away with the child at the insistence of Abraham's wife; and went to live in the Arabian desert.

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.

For tomorrow! Not yet! Above our foreheads

will break—death's sea of—memories!

For tomorrow, when we shall realize!

That sound what? as if someone were

crying just nearby? Can that be it?

The mountain is mourning. Because we must go down

separately, over such mud,

into life which we all know is nothing but

mob market barracks: That sound said: all poems of

mountains are written thus.

8

Hump of Atlas, groaning

Titan, this town where we

live, day in, day out, will come

to take a pride in the mountain

where we defeated life—at cards, and

insisted with passion not to

exist. Like a bear-pit.

And the twelve apostles.

Pay homage to my dark cave,

(I was a cave that the waves entered).

The last hand of the card game was

played, you remember, at the edge of the suburb?

Mountain many worlds the

gods take revenge on their own likeness!

And my grief began with this mountain

which sits above me now like my headstone.

'twelve apostles': Tsvetayeva is probably referring to the clock tower

on the Old Town Square in Prague where, each hour, the figures of the

twelve apostles appear and disappear above the dial.

9

Years will pass. And then the inscribed

slab will be changed for tombstone and removed.

There will be summerhouses on our mountain.

Soon it will be hemmed in with gardens,

because in outskirts like this they say

the air is better, and it's easier to live:

so it will be cut into plots of land,

and many lines of scaffolding will cross it.

They will straighten my mountain passes.

All my ravines will be upended.

There must be people who want to bring happiness

into their home, to have happiness.

Happiness at home! Love without fiction.

Imagine: without any stretching of sinews.

I have to be a woman and endure this!

(There was happiness—when you used to come,

happiness—in my home.) Love without any extra

sweetness given by parting. Or a knife.

Now on the ruins of our happiness

a town will grow: of husbands and wives.

And in that same blessed air, while

you can, everyone should sin—

soon shopkeepers on holidays

will be chewing the cud of their profits,

thinking out new levels and corridors, as

everything leads them back to their house!

For there has to be someone who needs

a roof with a stork's nest!

10

Yet under the weight of these foundations

the mountain will not forget the game.

Though people go astray they must remember.

And the mountain has mountains of time.

Obstinate crevices and cracks remain;

in summer homes, they'll realize, too late,

this is no hill, overgrown with families, but

a volcano! Make money out of that!

Can vineyards ever hold the danger

of Vesuvius? A giant without fear cannot

be bound with flax. And the delirium

of lips alone has the same power:

to make the vineyards stir and turn heavily,

to belch out their lava of hate.

Your daughters shall all become prostitutes

and all your sons turn into poets!

You shall rear a bastard child my daughter!

Waste your flesh upon the gipsies, son!

May you never own a piece of fertile land

you who take your substance from my blood.

Harder than any cornerstone, as

binding as the words of a dying man,

I curse you: do not look for happiness

upon my mountain where you move like ants!

At some hour unforeseen, some time unknowable,

you will realize, the whole lot of you, how

enormous and without measure is
the mountain of God's seventh law.