Marina Tsvetaeva
My ancestor was a rider...

My ancestor was a rider,
A thief, man with violin.
Is this not why my taste wanders
And hair smells of wind?

Does not he steal from a car,
Tan, apricots with my hand,
The author of my passionate fate,
Hook-nosed and curly-haired.

Twirling between teeth a wild rose
He wondered at tiller with plough...
He was a bad comrade — and wild
And tender he was at love!

Moon, beads, pipe and neighboring girls —
All of them — he loved.
I also think that my yellow-eyed
Ancestor was a coward.

That, having sold soul to Devil for a pence
At midnight he did not go
By cemetery; that he carried a knife
Behind a boot-leg, so.

That many a time from a corner he jumped
Like a cat, agile and thin...
And somehow I understood that he did
Not play on a violin.

And somehow all was not fitting to him,
Like in the summer — last year's snow.
Such a violinist my ancestor was.
I became such a poet — so.

Translated by Ilya Shambat