Marina Tsvetaeva
Rails

The bed of a railway cutting
has tidy sheets. The steel-blue
parallel tracks ruled out
as neatly as staves of music.

And over them people are driven
like possessed creatures from Pushkin
whose piteous song has been silenced.
Look, they’re departing, deserting.

And yet lag behind and linger,
the note of pain always rising
higher than love, as the poles freeze
to the bank, like Lot’s wife, forever.

Despair has appointed an hour for me
(as someone arranges a marriage): then
Sappho with her voice gone
I shall weep like a simple seamstress,

with a cry of passive lament –
a marsh heron! The moving train
will hoot its way over the sleepers
and slice through them like scissors.

Colours blur in my eye,
their glow a meaningless red.
All young women at times
are tempted by such a bed!

Translated by Elaine Feinstein