As translated by Nina Kossman, Marina Tsvetaeva poems hold up relatively well in English. Below are a few favorite lines from them.
From on a Red Steed
No Muse, no Muse
Sang over my shabby
Cradle, or took me by the hand.
I clang--blare--clap,
I snarl, I shoot sparks.
An alliance of winds
Sweeps the big roads.
Poem of the End
In the sky, rustier than tin,
Is a lamppost like a finger.
In every eyelash, a challenge.
Sky of bad omens.
Rust and tin.
This soundless kiss:
The stupor of the lips.
Thus--empresses' hands are kissed,
Thus--dead men's hands...
(The exaggeration of life,
In the final hour.)
What yesterday was waist-high,
Suddenly reaches the stars.
(Exaggerated, that is:
To its full height.)
Gypsy brotherhood--
This is where it led!
Like thunder on the head,
Or a naked blade,
My brother in sin,
My fever and fervor.
They dream of running away
The way you dream of home.
The water--a steely strip of it,
Deathly pale.
I stay with it like a singer
Sticks to the score; like a blend-man
Sticks to the edge of a wall.
The dead are faithful.
Yes, but not all in the same basket...
On my left side, death; on my right--
You. My right side seems dead.
Too much breaking, too much smoking,
But mainly too much conversation!
What's that smell? The smell of haste,
Of connivance and petty sins,
Of business secrets
And ballroom powder.
Too much laughing,
But mainly--too much calculation!
..The smell of business deals
And ballroom powder.
Too much stroking, too much groping
But mainly--too much squeezing.
(Yesterday's left-overs,
But who minds the smell?)
The chain's too short?
At least it's platinum, not steel!
Their triple chins shaking,
Like calves they eat their
Veal.
Love is flesh and blood, a flower
Steeped in its own blood.
Or did you think love was
A chat across the cafe table?
A quick hour, and then away?
Like all these gentlemen and ladies?
Love is...
--Is it a temple?
Hardly, child; it's a scar upon
A scar. In full view of servants
And drunks. (Soundlessly, I say,
"Love is a stretched
Bowstring: a partying shot.")
"And love is, above all, a shared
Bed."
"Or did you want to say:
Abyss?"
Death--and no conditions!
--Life!--Like a Roman commander,
Surveying what's left of his
Troops.
"Let's call it quit."
(Silently: Listen.
Wanting is what bodies do,
Now we are only souls.)
(Courteous liar,
You hand your love
The bloodstained honor of parting
Like a bouquet.) Say it clearly: Syllable
By syllable. "Let's call it quits,"
You said? (Like a handkerchief
Dropped in a moment of sweet
Mischief...) In this battle you are
Caesar. (What an insolent thrust:
To hand back to the opponent
The sword he surrendered
As a trophy).
The shadow of money
In a shadow land. Soundless,
These coins.
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!
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,
Not a sound.
Losing everything at once--
There's nothing neater.
Love is a seam.
A seam, not a sling; a stitch, not a shield.
Oh, don't ask to be shielded!
The stitch by which the dead are sewn to the earth,
By which I'm switched to you.
Better to rip than unravel.
It's there, but not for us!
A stepmother, not a mother!
Ahhh, the game's lost,
Ladies and gentlemen!
Suburbs everywhere!
Where are the real cities?
Life is a place where no one can live:
The Jewish quarter...
Wouldn't it be a hundred times better
To become the Wandering Jew?
For anyone not scum
Life is a pogrom.
Expect no mercy
In this most Christian of worlds
All poets are yids.
Weep! With others you'll recover
The dignity you lost with me.
We are fish of one
Sea. An upward sweep!
..like a dead seashell,
Lips upon lips.
Attempts at a Room
I remember three walls,
I can't vouch for the fourth.
Urgent wires
From everywhere and every when.
A portable chair of emptiness.)
The door--the threshold is sensitive to shoe soles!
The sheer wall of the Cheka,
A wall of dawns, of sunlit firing.
Squads of gestures more clear-cut than
In the shade--shot from behind, in the back.
What I can't understand: executions.
But leaving aide the torture-chamber theme,
The ceiling was definitely
Intact.
All of us, in that other world,
Will learn to walk upon
Emptiness.
A floor is for feet...
How embedded man is, how rooted!
So it won't leak: a ceiling.
Remember the ancient torture, one drop
Per hour? A floor: so that grass won't
Grow into the house, so earth won't enter---
Not a plasterer, nor a roofer
But a dream, a guard on wireless
Pathways: A He meeting a She
In chasms underneath eyelids.
The unsparkinling
Flood. A room? Mere surfaces.
After all, the desk is fed by
An elbow. Elbow out along its inclines--
That will be your desk's deskless.
Don't fret beforehand.
The chair will arise with the guest.
Gestures serve me
In psyche's hall.
In a child's stringed, inmost memory
Distance is hand luggage and a governance.
(Distance is stylish).
He who built (dug) the corridors
Knew where to curve them--
To give the blood time
To turn the corner
To give the brain time
To assign seats,
For a rendezvous is--a location,
A signature--a calculation--a draft--
Into time's farthest point:
Maybe the walls were go ne,
The ceiling definitely gave
a lurch. In our moths only the vocative
Blossomed. The floor was definitely a gap.
And seen through that gap--green as the Nile..
The ceiling was definitely adrift.
By a single dash is the poet held
Together....
New Year's Greetings
We have blood ties
With the beyond. Whoever had been to Russia
Has beheld that world in this.
Doubtless, I see poorly from my pit.
Doubtless, you see better from up there.
