Marina Tsvetaeva
Hands

Hands — in the dips
Of all resold, repledged, repossessed!
It’s just the lips,
The hands I mustn’t confuse with the rest!

All those vain
Petty things that steal me from sanity.
Hands to heaven,
Friend, here I plead to my own memory!

My poetry
(The dumping ground of my Highnesses!)
Is not to see
You wilt like every other guy once has.

My breast is deep
(Being a thousand-breast-wide mass
Grave!) – May it keep
You clear of rain as the millennia pass…

Midst bodies, may
You — my damnation two-starry-eyed! —

Never decay,
Tagged: unidentified.

Translated by Evgenia Sarkisyants