not a pretty picture. not a good. not a bad. picture. but an argument.

Monday, August 19, 2013

dear spectre of mist I know this is dreaming



from: Selected Poems, "Poems For Blok", by Marina Tsvetaeva
(translated by Elaine Feinstein)

from:  9

A weak shaft of light through the blackness of hell is
your voice under the rumble of exploding shells

in that thunder like a seraph he is announcing
in a toneless voice, from somewhere else, some

ancient misty morning he inhabits, how he
loved us, who are blind and nameless       who

share the blue cloak of       sinful treachery
and more tenderly than anyone loved the woman who

sank more daringly than any into the night       of evil,
and of his love for  you, Russia, which he cannot end.

from:  6

Thinking him      human      they
decided to kill him, and
now he's dead.  For ever.
-Weep.  For the dead angel.

At the day's setting, he
sang the evening beauty.

from :  10

Look there he is, weary from foreign parts,
a leader without body-guard

there - he is drinking a mountain stream from his hands
a prince without native land.

He has everything in his holy princedom there
Army, bread and mother.

Lovely is your inheritance.