Marina Tsvetaeva
To Moscow. 1. Inheritance — to the orphanage!..

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Inheritance — to the orphanage!
I will not.
Great, your corpulence:
I renounce.

As I look at my neighbors in the distance —
I renounce.
As I trample down your cobblestones—
I renounce.

====

As in the seventeenth year,
righteous in white,
I stood smirking
under fire.

As in the eighteenth year,
— With what? — a trace of rust,
I looked for all the sons
on the outposts.

Here — some of the bayonets —
I will not! —
For your short memory,
I renounce.

Dorogomilovo, Rogozhskaya,
the rest...
widely you have made
your liturgy known.

And the rank and file, side by side
on the main square
in rag-shreds,
consoled, with laurels...
Sweep together, blizzard, sawdust,
the snow is pure.
Bow, heads, to the graves
of the rebellious.

(Also, the righteous were,
were — not some foreign value!)
These falsehoods, red wounds
to the righteous...

====

The old, the former, to the dump!
Now, hello!
And in the blood, on the recent dead —
dance and caviar.

It is for those, for all those brothers
— I will not! —
Forgive me, Iberian Mother!
I renounce.

Translated by Margaree Little