Marina Tsvetaeva
Disciple. 2. There comes to one a certain hour...

2

There comes to one a certain hour
when we rise above our pride, cast it aside
like baggage we’ve carried long enough.
The hour one becomes a disciple —
exalted hour, coming but once,
the hour when you can’t evade your own triumph,
when there’s no place to hide from God but in God..
You’ve set down your weapons
at the feet of the one who was pointed out:
the indicating finger insisted,
you didn’t resist. You traded warrior’s glory
for a nomad’s camel,
set sail upon a different kind sea:
the unmapped sands of prophetic desert.
This high hour summons not to action
but to deeds, it calls with exalting voice;
this hour extricates from all the hours
that made up your self-willed days.
This is the hour that makes you bend
as the grain’s ripe ear bends —
beneath its own weight.
The harvest is ready. The hour sounds,
the wheat is eager to feel the millstone.
The Law, the Law! God’s given Torah!
(I eagerly accepted this spiritual yoke
while yet I slept in my mother’s womb;
it called, I longed, while yet in her body,
to embody this, to feel it shape my clay.)
This is the hour of consecration,
The world you’ve seen, considered ,wholly known,
appears in so different a light; now’s your time,
while dawn’s yet flaring its early first.
Abruptly comes the holy hour
when you, the disciple, chosen, choose
utmost loneliness!

Translated by Seraphina Powell