Marina Tsvetaeva
English translations copyright (c) 1998
Poem of the End (Ardis, 1998), 190 pp.
ISBN: 0-87501-112-8

from POEM OF THE AIR
[...]
More resonant than a grotto
In an equinoctial storm,
Than the cranium in an epileptic fit,
Than the stomach
In hunger... But not more resonant
Than a coffin at Easter...
              And even more resonant
In its pauses, intervals
Of might; and even more movable
In its pauses, a steam-engine's
Stopping for flour...
Through the interchange
Of the best divine gestures:
Of air with better-than air.
And I can't say those are sweet
Pauses: they are transfers
From the local to the interspatial--
These pauses, respites of the heart
When from the lung:
Ah! --half-stops
Of breath, the pauses
Of fish-afflictions, intermittent
Current, steam subsiding,
Breaks in the pulse--unclearly told,
In pauses: a lie, if it is said
In gasps...The bottomless hole
Of the lung, struck
With eternity...
              Not all call it
That. To some it's death.
Severance-of-the-earth.
The air--done.  Now--firmament.

Heart-rending music.
A sigh, always in vain.
--Done. Suffered out
In the gas bag
Of air.  Upwards--
Without a compass! Like father,
Like son. The hour when heredity
Is made manifest.
Firmament. Heads without breaks:
Crash-road.  Nothing can sever them:
Complete independence
Of head from shoulders,
Long since shed. The ground
For the un-grounded. At last
We're yours, Hermes! A full, precise
Sense of the winged
Head. There are no two ways.
Only one--straight.
Thus, sucked into space,
The steeple drops the church,
Leaving it to the days. God makes
Himself felt not in a day, but gradually,
Through feelings' dreck
And dregs.  A shot from a bow--
Upwards. Not into the kingdom of souls
But into the full self-possession
Of the head. Limits? Conquer them:
The hour when the Gothic
Temple overtakes its own
Steeple,-- having counted
Them  all--the cohorts of numbers!...
The hour when the Gothic
Spire overtakes its own
Intent...

    Meudon, during the Lindbergh days