Friday, November 28, 2008

Marina Tsvetaeva

This is beautiful.

Poetry of the End.


A single post, a point of rusting

tin in the sky

marks the fated place we

move to, he and I

on time as death is

prompt strangely

too smooth the gesture of

his hat to me

menace at the edges of his

eyes his mouth tight

shut strangely too low is the

bow he makes tonight

on time? that false note in

his voice, what

is it the brain alerts to and the

heart drops at?

under that evil sky, that sign of

tin and rust.

Six o'clock. There he is waiting

by the post.

Now we kiss soundlessly, his

lips stiff as

hands are given to queens, or

dead people thus

round us the shoving elbows of

ordinary bustle

and strangely irksome rises the

screech of a whistle

howls like a dog screaming

angrier, longer: what

a nightmare strangeness life is

at death point

and that nightmare reached my waist

only last night

and now reaches the stars, it has

grown to its true height

crying silently love love until

—Has it gone

six, shall we go to the cinema?

I shout it! home!

And what have we come to?

tents of nomads

thunder and drawn swords over

our heads, some

terror we expect

listen houses

collapsing in the one

word: home.

It is the whine of a cossetted

child lost, it is the

noise a baby makes for

give and mine.

Brother in dissipation, cause

of this cold fever, you

hurry now to get home just

as men rush in leaving

like a horse jerking the

line rope down in the dust.

Is there even a building there?

Ten steps before us.

A house on the hill no higher a

house on the top of the hill and

a window under the roof is it

from the red sun alone

it is burning? or is it my life

which must begin again? how

simple poems are: it means I

must go out into the night

(and talk to

who shall I tell my sorrow

my horror greener than ice?

—You've been thinking too much.

A solemn answer: yes.

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