Marina Tsvetaeva
Disciple. 4. The freight of day...

4

The freight of day
sinks at last beneath the waves.
Two eternal friends
slowly, calmly, climb a hill,
so close together
that from a distance you’d think them one.
Mounting, wordless, shoulder to shoulder,
sharing a single cloak,
even taking their breaths together,
these two, as one, will rouse
tomorrows wars, which now are sleeping,
as they, standing together, sustained yesterday’s,
like a single, impassive, dark, two-turreted tower.

Wise as serpents
and harmless as doves...
“Father, take us back
into your infinite being!”
Clouds cross the sky like smoke
from battling celestial armies.
Their shared cloak flutters
as though lifted by the wind
of their shared spirit, by their sigh;
in their gaze earnestly alternates
prayer’s soft imploring light
and restrained impatience...
“O Father, receive us into your evening,
recover us in your paternal night.”
The heat-stunned desert breathes again,
rejoices that night’s coming.
Descending heavily,
carefully pondered,
comes the ponderous, satisfying answer,
sweet and heavy as the fall of ripe fruit,
the heard word, “O my child!”
The human herds are quiet,
gathered back in their barns;
on a sunset gilded hill:
they too, these two — at peace. 

Translated by Seraphina Powell