One thought on “From “Poem of the End” by Marina Tsvetaeva”
I posted part of this poem (there are 14 parts) last year. As I mentioned then, this is my all-time favorite poem by my all-time favorite poet and translator. (If you should feel the need to seek out Marina Tsvetaeva, please do yourself a favor and get the book translated by Nina Kossman. Every other translation of her I've read really sucked the life out of her voice.) And now, without further ado, are parts 9 and 10.
9.
Like factory buildings, loud
And responsive to your call,
Here’s the innermost, visceral
Secret that wives keep from husbands,
Widows from friends; here is
The cherished secret Eve took from the tree:
I’m no better than a beast
Wounded in the gut.
It burns… As if my soul were torn
Away with the skin. Like steam through a hole,
It vanished, that notorious silly heresy
Called the soul.
That Christian anemia!
Steam! (Cover with it with a poultice!)
There never was any such thing!
Only a body which wanted to live,
And no longer wants to.
Forgive me! I didn’t mean it!
The howl of ripped entrails!
Thus at four in the morning
The condemned wait to be shot,
Playing chess, with a grin
Teasing the corridor’s eye.
We’re pawns in a chess game
And someone’s playing with us.
Who? Kind gods? Or thieves?
Filling the entire keyhole—
An eye. Along the red corridor—
A clank. The bolt shoots back.
A drag on a cigarette.
(Spit.) We did some living. (Spit.)
Along this checkered pavement is
The road straight to the pit.
To blood. A secret eye:
The dormer eye of the moon…
—–
And looking at you sideways:
“How far away you already are!”
10.
A shared, simultaneous
Shudder: There’s our coffee shop!
Our island, our shrine,
Where in the morning we—
Rabble! A chance couple—
Conducted our matins.
A smell of market stalls and sourness,
Of drowsiness and spring…
The coffee was lousy—
Really nothing but oats in it.
(Oats to extinguish,
The race-horses’ wildness)
Not of Arabia,
But of Arcadia
The coffee’s smell…
But how she smiled at us,
Sitting us down,
Worldly-wise, sorrowful,
With a gray-haired lover’s
Solicitous smile:
You’ll wither! Live now!
A smile at our penniless madness,
Our yawns and love,
But mainly at youth,
At passions out of climate,
Blown in from somewhere
Flown in from somewhere
Into the dim coffee shop—
Burnoose and Tunis,
At hopes and muscles
Under worn-out clothes.
(My friend, I’m not complaining.
Scars upon scars.)
Oh, how she saw us off,
Our hostess in her cap,
Stiff as Dutch linen.
—–
Half-remembered, half-grasped,
As if taken too soon from a party…
“Our street!” “No longer ours…”
“How many times we…” “No longer will we…”
“Tomorrow the sun will rise in the West!”
“David will break with Jehovah!”
“What are we doing?” “Separating.”
“That word means nothing to me.”
The most meaningless word:
Separating. Am I one of a hundred?
Just four syllables
After which comes emptiness.
Wait! Is it Serbian or Croatian?
Maybe Czech is playing us false?
Separation. Separating…
The most preternatural nonsense.
A howl that rips the ears,
Stretched out beyond the bounds of pain.
Separation—it’s not Russian talk.
Not women’s, nor men’s.
Nor God’s. What are we, sheep,
Gaping at our dinner?
Separation—in what language?
There’s no sense in it,
No sound. Just a hollow noise
Like a handsaw heard, say, through sleep.
Separation: it’s like Khlebnikov’s
Nightingale moans,
Swanlike…
But how did it happen?
Like a dried-out river bed—
The air! A handclap can be heard.
Separation is a clap of thunder
Over our heads. The ocean flooding the cabin.
Oceania’s farthest cape!
These streets are too steep.
Separation is descent—
Down the mountain… the sigh of two massive
Shoes. At last the palm, and the nail in it.
This overpowering argument:
Separation means we must part,
We, who had grown to be as one.
–Marina Tsvetaeva. Translated by Nina Kossman.
Notes: (from my edition of Poem of the End, published in 1998 by Ardis)
“One of a hundred”: this is a pun in Russian. The root of the first-person plural form of “separating” (“ra-stayomsia”) sounds like the genitive of the word for “hundred” (“sta”).
Khlebnikov, Velimir (1885-1922) a Russian Futurist poet, a great innovator poetic language.
I posted part of this poem (there are 14 parts) last year. As I mentioned then, this is my all-time favorite poem by my all-time favorite poet and translator. (If you should feel the need to seek out Marina Tsvetaeva, please do yourself a favor and get the book translated by Nina Kossman. Every other translation of her I've read really sucked the life out of her voice.) And now, without further ado, are parts 9 and 10.
9.
Like factory buildings, loud
And responsive to your call,
Here’s the innermost, visceral
Secret that wives keep from husbands,
Widows from friends; here is
The cherished secret Eve took from the tree:
I’m no better than a beast
Wounded in the gut.
It burns… As if my soul were torn
Away with the skin. Like steam through a hole,
It vanished, that notorious silly heresy
Called the soul.
That Christian anemia!
Steam! (Cover with it with a poultice!)
There never was any such thing!
Only a body which wanted to live,
And no longer wants to.
Forgive me! I didn’t mean it!
The howl of ripped entrails!
Thus at four in the morning
The condemned wait to be shot,
Playing chess, with a grin
Teasing the corridor’s eye.
We’re pawns in a chess game
And someone’s playing with us.
Who? Kind gods? Or thieves?
Filling the entire keyhole—
An eye. Along the red corridor—
A clank. The bolt shoots back.
A drag on a cigarette.
(Spit.) We did some living. (Spit.)
Along this checkered pavement is
The road straight to the pit.
To blood. A secret eye:
The dormer eye of the moon…
—–
And looking at you sideways:
“How far away you already are!”
10.
A shared, simultaneous
Shudder: There’s our coffee shop!
Our island, our shrine,
Where in the morning we—
Rabble! A chance couple—
Conducted our matins.
A smell of market stalls and sourness,
Of drowsiness and spring…
The coffee was lousy—
Really nothing but oats in it.
(Oats to extinguish,
The race-horses’ wildness)
Not of Arabia,
But of Arcadia
The coffee’s smell…
But how she smiled at us,
Sitting us down,
Worldly-wise, sorrowful,
With a gray-haired lover’s
Solicitous smile:
You’ll wither! Live now!
A smile at our penniless madness,
Our yawns and love,
But mainly at youth,
At passions out of climate,
Blown in from somewhere
Flown in from somewhere
Into the dim coffee shop—
Burnoose and Tunis,
At hopes and muscles
Under worn-out clothes.
(My friend, I’m not complaining.
Scars upon scars.)
Oh, how she saw us off,
Our hostess in her cap,
Stiff as Dutch linen.
—–
Half-remembered, half-grasped,
As if taken too soon from a party…
“Our street!” “No longer ours…”
“How many times we…” “No longer will we…”
“Tomorrow the sun will rise in the West!”
“David will break with Jehovah!”
“What are we doing?” “Separating.”
“That word means nothing to me.”
The most meaningless word:
Separating. Am I one of a hundred?
Just four syllables
After which comes emptiness.
Wait! Is it Serbian or Croatian?
Maybe Czech is playing us false?
Separation. Separating…
The most preternatural nonsense.
A howl that rips the ears,
Stretched out beyond the bounds of pain.
Separation—it’s not Russian talk.
Not women’s, nor men’s.
Nor God’s. What are we, sheep,
Gaping at our dinner?
Separation—in what language?
There’s no sense in it,
No sound. Just a hollow noise
Like a handsaw heard, say, through sleep.
Separation: it’s like Khlebnikov’s
Nightingale moans,
Swanlike…
But how did it happen?
Like a dried-out river bed—
The air! A handclap can be heard.
Separation is a clap of thunder
Over our heads. The ocean flooding the cabin.
Oceania’s farthest cape!
These streets are too steep.
Separation is descent—
Down the mountain… the sigh of two massive
Shoes. At last the palm, and the nail in it.
This overpowering argument:
Separation means we must part,
We, who had grown to be as one.
–Marina Tsvetaeva. Translated by Nina Kossman.
Notes: (from my edition of Poem of the End, published in 1998 by Ardis)
“One of a hundred”: this is a pun in Russian. The root of the first-person plural form of “separating” (“ra-stayomsia”) sounds like the genitive of the word for “hundred” (“sta”).
Khlebnikov, Velimir (1885-1922) a Russian Futurist poet, a great innovator poetic language.