Marina Tsvetaeva
An Attempt at Jealousy

How is your life with another, —
Simpler, is it? — One stroke of an oar!—
And as easily as some coastline
Your memory of me

Recedes, like a floating island
(In the sky — not the water!)
Souls, souls! should be your sisters,
Not your mistress—es!

How is your life with a simple
Woman? Without your goddess?
Your Majesty dethroned, over—
Thrown (by a single slip-up),

How is your life — keeping busy —
Holed up? How do you even — get up?
With the customs of undying banality
How do you manage, poor man?

“Enough of these eruptions —
And scenes! I’ll get my own house.”
How is life with just anyone —
My chosen one!

With more appropriate, more edible —
Food? Fed up — not your fault . . .
How is your life with a molehill —
You, who trampled Sinai!

How is your life with a foreigner,
A local? Close to your rib — a dear?
Doesn’t shame lash your head
Like the reins of Zeus?

How is your life — are you well —
Able? Do you sing ever — how?
With the curse of undying conscience
How do you manage, poor man?

How is your life with a commodity
Of the market? Finding her rent — steep?
After the marble of Carrara
How is life with the dust

Of plaster? (A God—hewn from
Blocks — and now utterly shattered!)
How is your life with the hundredth-thousandth —
You, who knew Lilith!

Does your novelty of the market
Satisfy? Grown cool to enchantment,
How is your life with an earthly
Woman, with no sixth

Sense?
           Well, I declare: are you happy?

No? In a shallow draining whirl —
How is your life, darling? Is it harder,
As it is for me, with another?

Translated by Mary Jane White