Marina Tsvetaeva
An Emigrant

Here among you: your lodgings, your lucre, your smoke,
Your ladies, your Legislatures,
Having not got used to you, having not been blunted by you
Like a certain —
Schumann scudding along with spring on the sly:
From above! and beyond!
Like a nightingale’s suspended tremolo —
A certain one — is chosen.

The most timorous one, and having stretched him on the rack —
You lick his feet!
Having lost his way among your hernias and love-handles
God is left to wander among your lechers.
Superfluous! Embroidered! Walk-out! Upstart! Uppity
And not grown out of it . . . Unwilling to submit
To the gallows... Among your riot of currencies and visas
An exile from Vega — from a distant star.

Translated by Mary Jane White