One of the great voices of twentieth-century Russian poetry returns in an anthology that traces the different stages of a work defined by intensity, rebellion, and an extraordinary verbal energy. The selection offers a glimpse into the varied modulations of a poet who made love, loss, exile, and defiance of the world a radical experience of language.
In Zenda we reproduce five poems from My March Is Light (Pre-Textos), by Marina Tsvietáieva.
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You Who Measures My Days
You who measure my days…
With me, warm and unroofed,
through feverish squares,
have you wandered under the light of the enormous moon?
And in a fetid tavern,
under the howl of a frenzied waltz,
with your drunken fist have you broken
my sharp fingers?
Have you heard how I whisper
in the night? Oh! Smoke and ashes!
What do you know of me, then,
if you have not drunk or slept with me?
December 7, 1916
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You Tap Three Times With Caution
You tap three times with caution:
tender enemy, uncertain friend,
you will not deceive me! This is not how the pilgrim
ends his road. This is how one strikes the chest
for love. This is how, lowering the gaze,
the dark hell calls at the door of the luminous paradise.
June 6, 1918
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Love! Love! Even in the Last Breath
Love! Love! Even in the last breath
and in the grave I shall be watchful, bewitched, unsettled,
I will go to meet you, Beloved! I will not abandon you
neither in the tomb beneath the snow, nor in the tomb of the heavens.
I was not given a pair of marvellous wings
to bear this weight in my heart.
I will not join that wretched tribe,
wrapped in linen, without eyes and without a voice.
No! I will raise my arms, firm at my waist,
with a single surge, to free you from your shroud; death I will force! For thousands of leagues around
the snow and the burning forest have merged.
And, despite everything — shoulders, wings, stiff knees
drag me to the cemetery, and yet—
only to, outwitting death, lift myself in verse
or bloom into a rose!
November 28, 1920
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What Others Do Not Specify, Bring It To Me
What others do not specify, bring it to me,
everything must burn in my fire!
I seduce life, and death too,
as a light offering for my fire.
The flame esteems light matters:
the task, the crowns, the words…
The flame burns with such sustenance!
And purer than ash you will be reborn!
I am the phoenix, I sing only in the fire!
Hold my existence high in your hands!
I burn in the height until I consume myself
and may the night be luminous for you.
A bonfire of ice, a source of fire!
I carry my tall figure high,
I carry my lofty dignity…
As Interlocutor and Heir!
September 2, 1918
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The Cave
If I could, I would take you
into the bowels of a cave:
into the cave of a dragon,
into the thicket of the panther,
to its claws,
I would take you – if I could.
To the bosom of nature, to its lap.
If I could, I would strip myself of my own panther skin…
I would offer it to the thicket, for study,
to the bushes, to the undergrowth, to the brook and to the ivy.
There, where in the sopor, in the darkness, in the shadows,
the branches entwine in eternal marriage.
There, where in granite, in the bark and in maternal milk,
the hands entwine in infinite fusion
like branches and rivers…
In the cave without light, in the thick growth without a trace.
In the foliage, in the ivy, like a mantle, in the ivy.
Neither white light, nor black bread:
in the dew, in the foliage, in the foliage – as in a family…
To ensure that no one calls at the door
and no one shouts at the window,
so that nothing happens from now on,
so that it never ends!
But the cave is very small,
and the thick growth is small!
If I could, I would take you
to the cave of my entrails.
If I could,
I would take you.
Savoy, August 27, 1936
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Author: Marina Tsvietáieva. Title: My March Is Light. A Poetic Anthology. Translator: Reyes García Burdeus. Publisher: Pre-Textos. Sales: Todos tus libros.