Marina Tsvetaeva
Homesickness

Homesickness! Long ago revealed
as fraudulent delusion.
I don't care where
I am alone. It doesn't matter

across what streets, into what house
I drag myself, and my shopping basket —
a house that doesn't know I'm there,
like a hospital or barracks.

I don't care who sees me lie
like a caged lion, snarling slowly,
nor from what society they
thrust me, force me out into

my own internal solitude,
a polar bear in tropic water.
I don't care where I am hurt,
nor where I am insulted.

I do not love my native tongue,
its weak, breast-fed attraction.
I am indifferent to the words
in which someone misunderstands me

(someone who reads magazines
and thrives on gossip columns).
He is Twentieth-Century Man —
my own age was never numbered.

Struck dumb, a rotting log
that marked a path now forgotten.
And I don't care. All things are strange.
All facts. And perhaps what once

was closest is strangest of all.
All signs upon me, all traces
and dates seem wiped away.
A soul. Born. Somewhere. Or other.

My homeland cared so little for me
any clever sleuth
may search my soul —
he will find no birthmark.

Each house is strange, each altar bare.
And I don't care. It doesn't matter.
But if, beside the autumn road, I see
a rowan-tree...

Translated by Paul Schmidt