Marina Tsvetaeva
Homesick for the Motherland!

Homesick for the Motherland! Long
Unmasked confusion !
I do not care —
Where I am completely lonely

Or over what stones I wander home
With a shopping bag
To a house, that is no longer mine
Like to a hospital or barracks.

I do not care that I am among
Bristling people — a captive
Lion, or what human society
Will cast me out — as it must —

Into myself, my individual feelings.
A Kamchatka bear without ice
Where I do no fit ( and no goodbye!)
Where they grovel — I am one.

I will not be seduced by the language,
The mother tongue's milky call.
I do not care — in what language
I am humiliated!

(Or by what readers , newspaper
Swallowers, searching for gossip...)
They belong to the twentieth century —
I am — before all time!

Stunned, like a log,
Left over from an alley of trees.
People are all the same to me,
And I could be just equal to —

A former native — only.
All my tokens, all meanings,
All dates — are gone:
My soul, born - somewhere .

For my country has taken so little care of me,
That even my keenest eye
Along with all my soul, all — have been alienated!
That even my birthmark cannot be discerned!

Every house is alien to me , every church is empty,
Everything and all — is the same.
But if along the road — a bush
Rises, especially — a rowanberry...

Translated by Rolf W. F. Gross