Marina Tsvetaeva
Poem of the end

1

A single post, a point of rusting
    tin in the sky
marks the fated place we
    move to, he and I

on time as death is
    prompt strangely
too smooth the gesture of
    his hat to me

menace at the edges of his
    eyes his mouth tight
shut strangely too low is the
    bow he makes tonight

on time? that false note in
    his voice, what
is it the brain alerts to and the
    heart drops at?

under that evil sky, that sign of
    tin and rust.
Six o’clock. There he is waiting
    by the post.

Now we kiss soundlessly, his
    lips stiff as
hands are given to queens, or
    dead people thus

round us the shoving elbows of
    ordinary bustle
and strangely irksome rises the
    screech of a whistle

howls like a dog screaming
    angrier, longer: what
a nightmare strangeness life is
    at death point

and that nightmare reached my waist
    only last night
and now reaches the stars, it has
    grown to its true height

crying silently love love until
    — Has it gone
six, shall we go to the cinema?
    I shout it: home!

2

And what have we come to?
    tents of nomads
thunder and drawn swords over
    our heads, some

terror we expect
    listen houses
collapsing in the one
    word: home.

It is the whine of a cossetted
    child lost, it is the
noise a baby makes for
    give and mine.

Brother in dissipation, cause
    of this cold fever, you
hurry now to get home just
    as men rush in leaving

like a horse jerking the
    line rope down in the dust.
Is there even a building there?
    Ten steps before us.

A house on the hill no higher a
    house on the top of the hill and
a window under the roof is it
    from the red sun alone

it is burning? or is it my life
    which must begin again? how
simple poems are: it means I
    must go out into the night
                                              and talk to

who shall I tell my sorrow
    my horror greener than ice?
— You’ve been thinking too much.
    A solemn answer: yes.

3

And the embankment I hold
    to water thick and solid as
if we had come to the hanging
    gardens of Semiramis

to water a strip as colourless
    as a slab for corpses
I am like a female singer holding
    to her music. To this wall.

Blindly for you won’t return
    or listen, even if I bend to
the quencher of all thirst, I am
    hanging at the gutter of a roof.

Lunatic. It is not the river
    (I was born naiad) that makes me
shiver now, she was a hand I held
    to, when you walked beside me, a lover

and faithful.
                   The dead are faithful
though not to all in their cells; if
    death lies on my left now,
it is at your side I feel it.

Now a shaft of astonishing light, and
    laughter that cheap tambourine.
— You and I must have a talk. And
    I shiver: let’s be brave, shall we?

4

A blonde mist, a wave of
gauze ruffles, of human
breathing, smoky exhalations
endless talk the smell of
what? of haste and filth
connivance shabby acts all
the secrets of business men
    and ballroom powder.

Family men like bachelors
move in their rings like middle-aged boys
always joking always laughing, and
calculating, always calculating
large deals and little ones, they are
snout-deep in the feathers of some
business arrangement
    and ballroom powder.

(I am half-turned away is this
our house? I am not mistress here)
Someone over his cheque book
another bends to a kid glove hand
a third works at a delicate foot
in patent leather furtively the smell
rises of marriage-broking
    and ballroom powder.

In the window is the silver
bite of a tooth: it is the Star of Malta,
which is the sign of stroking of the love
that leads to pawing and to pinching.
(Yesterday’s food perhaps but
nobody worries if it smells slightly)
of dirt, commercial tricks
    and ballroom powder.

The chain is too short perhaps even
if it is not steel but platinum?
Look how their three chins shake
like cows munching their own veal
above their sugared necks
the devils swing on a gas lamp
smelling of business slumps
and another powder
made by Berthold Schwartz
                                            genius
intercessor for people:
— You and I must have a talk
— Let’s be brave, shall we?

5

I catch a movement of his
    lips, but he won’t
speak — You don’t love me?
    — Yes, but in torment

drained and driven to death
    (He looks round like an eagle)
— You call this home? It’s
    in the heart. — What literature!

For love is flesh, it is a
    flower flooded with blood.
Did you think it was just a
    little chat across a table

a snatched hour and back home again
    the way gentlemen and ladies
play at it? Either love is
— A shrine?
                    or else a scar.

A scar every servant and guest
    can see (and I think silently:
love is a bow-string pulled
    back to the point of breaking).

Love is a bond. That has snapped for
    us our mouths and lives part
(I begged you not to put a
    spell on me that holy hour

close on mountain heights of
    passion memory is mist).
Yes, love is a matter of gifts
    thrown in the fire, for nothing

The shell-fish crack of his mouth
    is pale, no chance of a smile:
— Love is a large bed.
    — Or else an empty gulf.

Now his fingers begin to
    beat, no mountains
move. Love is —
                            — Mine: yes.
I understand. And so?

The drum beat of his fingers
    grows (scaffold and square)
— Let's go, he says. For me, let’s
    die, would be easier.

Enough cheap stuff rhymes
    like railway hotel rooms, so:
— love means life although
    the ancients had a different
name.
          — Well?
                        A scrap
    of handkerchief in a fist
like a fish. Shall we go? How,
    bullet rail poison

death anyway, choose: I make no
    plans. A Roman, you
survey the men still alive
    like an eagle:
                         say goodbye.

6

I didn’t want this, not
    this (but listen, quietly,
to want is what bodies do
    and now we are ghosts only).

And yet I didn’t say it
    though the time of the train is set
and the sorrowful honour of leaving
    is a cup given to women

or perhaps in madness I
    misheard you polite liar:
is this the bouquet that you give your
    love, this blood-stained honour?

Is it? Sound follows
    sound clearly: was it goodbye
you said? (as sweetly casual
    as a handkerchief dropped without

thought) in this battle
    you are Caesar (What an
insolent thrust, to put the
    weapon of defeat, into my hand

like a trophy). It continues. To
    sound in my ears. As I bow.
— Do you always pretend
    to be forestalled in breaking?

Don’t deny this, it
    is a vengeance of Lovelace
a gesture that does you credit
    while it lifts the flesh

from my bones. Laughter the laugh of
    death. Moving. Without desire.
That is for others now
    we are shadows to one another.

Hammer the last nail in
    screw up the lead coffin.
— And now a last request.
    — Of course. Then say nothing

about us to those who will
    come after me. (The sick
on their stretchers talk of spring.)
— May I ask the same thing?

— Perhaps I should give you a ring?
    — No. Your look is no longer open.
The stamp left on your heart
    would be the ring on your hand.

So now without any scenes
    I must swallow, silently, furtively.
— A book then? No, you give those
    to everyone, don’t even write them

        books...

So now must be no
so now must be no
must be no crying

In wandering tribes of
fishermen brothers
drink without crying

dance without crying
their blood is hot, they
pay without crying

pearls in a glass
melt, as they run their
world without crying

Now I am going and this
Harlequin gives his
Pierrette a bone like
a piece of contempt

He throws her the honour
of ending the curtain, the last
word when one inch of lead in
the breast would be hotter and better

Cleaner. My teeth
press my lips. I can
stop myself crying

pressing the sharpness
into the softest
so without crying

so tribes of nomads
die without crying
burn without crying.

So tribes of fishermen
in ash and song can
hide their dead man.

7

And the embankment. The last one.
    Finished. Separate, and hands apart
like neighbours avoiding one another. We
    walk away from the river, from my

cries. Falling salts of mercury
    I lick off without attention.
No great moon of Solomon
    has been set for my tears in the skies.

A post. Why not beat my forehead to
    blood on it? To smithereens! We are
like fellow criminals, fearing one
    another. (The murdered thing is love.)

Don’t say these are lovers? Going into
    the night? Separately? To sleep with others?
You understand the future is up there?
    he says. And I throw back my head.

To sleep! Like newly-weds over their mat!
    To sleep! We can’t fall into
step. And I plead miserably: take my
    arm, we aren’t convicts to walk like this.

Shock! It’s as though his soul has touched
    me as his arm leans on mine. The electric
current beats along feverish wiring,
    and rips. He’s leaned on my soul with his arm.

He holds me. Rainbows everywhere. What is more like a
    rainbow than tears? Rain, a curtain, denser
than beads. I don't know if such embankments can
    end. But here is a bridge and
                                                    —Well then?

Here? (The hearse is ready.)
    Peaceful his eyes move
upward: couldn’t you see me home?
    for the very last time.

8

Last bridge I won’t
give up or take out my hand
this is the last bridge
the last bridging between

water and firm land:
and I am saving these
coins for death
for Charon, the price of Lethe

this shadow money
from my dark hand I press
soundlessly into
the shadowy darkness of his

shadow money it is
no gleam and tinkle in it
coins for shadows:
the dead have enough poppies

This bridge

Lovers for the most
part are without hope: passion
also is just
a bridge, a means of connection

It’s warm: to nestle
close at your ribs, to move in
a visionary pause
towards nothing, beside nothing

no arms no legs
now, only the bone of my
side is alive where
it presses directly against you

life in that side
only, ear and echo is it: there
I stick like white to
egg yolk, or an eskimo to his fur

adhesive, pressing
joined to you: Siamese
twins are no nearer.
The woman you call mother

when she forgot
all things in motionless triumph
only to carry you:
she did not hold you closer.

Understand: we have
grown into one as we slept and
now I can’t jump
because I can’t let go your hand

and I won’t be torn off
as I press close to you: this
bridge is no husband
but a lover: a just slipping past

our support: for the
river is fed with bodies!
I bite in like a tick
you must tear out my roots to be rid of me

like ivy like a tick
inhuman godless
to throw me away like a thing,
when there is

no thing I ever prized
in this empty world of things.
Say this is only dream,
night still and afterwards morning

an express to Rome?
Granada? I won’t know myself
as I push off
the Himalayas of bedclothes.

But this dark is deep:
now I warm you with my blood, listen
to this flesh.
It is far truer than poems.

If you are warm, who
will you go to tomorrow for that?
This is delirium,
please say this bridge cannot

end
       as it ends.

— Here then? His gesture could
be made by a child, or a god.
— And so? — I am biting in!
For a little more time. The last of it.

9

Blatant as factory buildings,
    as alert to a call
here is the sacred and sublingual
    secret wives keep from husbands and

widows from friends, here is the full
    story that Eve took from the tree:
I am no more than an animal that
    someone has stabbed in the stomach.

Burning. As if the soul had been
    torn away with the skin. Vanished like steam
through a hole is that well-known foolish
    heresy called a soul.

That Christian leprosy:
    steam: save that with your poultices.
There never was such a thing.
    There was a body once, wanted to

live no longer wants to live.

Forgive me! I didn’t mean it!
    The shriek of torn entrails.
So prisoners sentenced to death wait
    for the 4 a.m. firing squad.

At chess perhaps with a grin
    they mock the corridor’s eye.
Pawns in the game of chess:
    someone is playing with us.

Who? Kind gods or? Thieves?
    The peephole is filled with an
eye and the red corridor
    clanks. Listen the latch lifts.

One drag on tobacco, then
    spit, it’s all over, spit,
along this paving of chess squares
    is a direct path to the ditch

to blood. And the secret eye
    the dormer eye of the moon.

And now, squinting sideways, how
    far away you are already.

10

Closely, like one creature, we
start: there is our cafe!

There is our island, our shrine, where
in the morning, we people of the

rabble, a couple for a minute only,
conducted a morning service:

with things from country markets, sour
things seen through sleep or spring.
The coffee was nasty there
entirely made from oats (and

with oats you can extinguish
caprice in fine race-horses).
There was no smell of Araby.
Arcadia was in

that coffee.

But how she smiled at us
and sat us down by her,
sad and worldly in her wisdom
a grey-haired paramour.

Her smile was solicitous
(saying: you’ll wither! live!),
it was a smile at madness and being
penniless, at yawns and love

and — this was the chief thing —
at laughter without reason
smiles with no deliberation
and our faces without wrinkles.

Most of all at youth
at passions out of this climate
blown in from some other place
flowing from some other source

into that dim café
(burnous and Tunis) where
she smiled at hope and flesh
under old-fashioned clothes.

(My dear friend I don’t complain.
It’s just another scar.)
To think how she saw us off,
that proprietress in her cap

stiff as a Dutch hat...

Not quite remembering, not quite
understanding, we are led away from the festival —
along our street! no longer ours that
we walked many times, and no more shall.

Tomorrow the sun will rise in the West.
And then David will break with Jehovah.
— What are we doing? — We are separating.
— That’s a word that means nothing to me.

It’s the most inhumanly senseless
of words: sep arating. (Am I one of a hundred?)
It is simply a word of four syllables and
ehind their sound lies: emptiness.

Wait! Is it even correct in Serbian or
Croatian? Is it a Czech whim, this word.
Sep aration! To sep arate!
It is insane unnatural

a sound to burst the eardrums, and spread out
far beyond the limits of longing itself.
Separation — the word is not in the Russian
language. Or the language of women. Or men.

Nor in the language of God. What are we — sheep?
To stare about us as we eat.
Separation — in what language is it,
when the meaning itself doesn’t exist?

or even the sound! Well — an empty one, like
the noise of a saw in your sleep perhaps.
Separation. That belongs to the school of
Khlebnikov’s nightingale-groaning

swan-like...
                  so how does it happen?
Like a lake of water running dry.
Into air. I can feel our hands touching.
To separate. Is a shock of thunder

upon my head — oceans rushing into
a wooden house. This is Oceania’s
furthest promontory. And the streets are steep.
To separate. That means to go downward

downhill the sighing sound of two
heavy soles and at last a hand receives
the nail in it. A logic that turns
everything over. To separate

means we have to become
single creatures again

we who had grown into one.

12

Dense as a horse mane is:
    rain in our eyes. And hills.
We have passed the suburb.
    Now we are out of town,

which is there but not for us.
    Stepmother not mother.
Nowhere is lying ahead.
    And here is where we fall.

A field with. A fence and.
    Brother and sister. Standing.
Life is only a suburb:
    so you must build elsewhere.

Ugh, what a lost cause
    it is, ladies and gentlemen,
for the whole world is suburb:
    Where are the real towns?

Rain rips at us madly.
    We stand and break with each other.
In three months, these must be
    the first moments of sharing.

Is it true, God, that you even
    tried to borrow from Job?
Well, it didn’t come off.
    Still. We are. Outside town.

Beyond it! Understand? Outside!
    That means we’ve passed the walls.
Life is a place where it’s forbidden
    to live. Like the Hebrew quarter.

And isn’t it more worthy to
    become an eternal Jew?
Anyone not a reptile
    suffers the same pogrom.

Life is for converts only
    Judases of all faiths.
Let’s go to leprous islands
    or hell anywhere only not

life which puts up with traitors, with
    those who are sheep to butchers!
This paper which gives me the
    right to live — I stamp. With my feet.

Stamp! for the shield of David.
    Vengeance! for heaps of bodies
and they say after all (delicious) the
    Jews didn’t want to live!

Ghetto of the chosen. Beyond this
    ditch. No mercy
In this most Christian of worlds
    all poets are Jews.

13

This is how they sharpen knives on a
    stone, and sweep sawdust up with
brooms. Under my hands there is
    something wet and furry.

Now where are those twin male
    virtues: strength, dryness?
Here beneath my hand I can
    feel tears. Not rain!

What temptations can still be
    spoken of? Property is water.
Since I felt your diamond eyes under
    my hands, flowing.

There is no more I can lose. We have
    reached the end of ending.
And so I simply stroke, and
    stroke. And stroke your face.

This is the kind of pride we have:
    Marinkas are Polish girls.
Since now the eyes of an eagle weep
    underneath these hands...

Can you be crying? My friend, my
    — everything! Please forgive me!
How large and salty now is the
    taste of that in my fist.

Male tears are — cruel! They
    rise over my head! Weep,
there will soon be others to
    heal any guilt towards me.

Fish of identic-
    al sea. A sweep upward! like
...any dead shells and any
    lips upon lips.

In tears.
Wormwood
to taste.
— And tomorrow when
I am awake?

14

A slope like a path for
sheep. With town noises.
Three trollops approaching.
They are laughing. At tears.

They are laughing the full noon of
their bellies shake, like waves!
They laugh at the
                            inappropriate
disgraceful, male

tears of yours, visible
through the rain like scars!
Like a shameful pearl on
the bronze of a warrior.

These first and last tears
pour them now — for me —
for your tears are pearls
that I wear in my crown.

And my eyes are not lowered.
I stare through the shower.
Yes, dolls of Venus
stare at me! because

This is a closer bond
than the transport of lying down.
The Song of Songs itself
gives place to our speech,

infamous birds as we are
Solomon bows to us, for
our simultaneous cries
are something more than a dream!

And into the hollow waves of
darkness — hunched and level —
without trace — in silence —
something sinks like a ship.

Translated by Elaine Feinstein