Clear Voices | Page 4

from heaven,

enticing them to your feet.
And when you scorn faith
that grey-blue
halo,
I once saw before,
begins to glow above you.
Are you good
or evil? - You are - inhuman.
They tell strange tales about you.
For

some you are - Muse, miracle.
For me you are - torment, hell.
I
don't know why, in dawn's hour,
when I was finally exhausted,
I
saw your face, did not die,
and asked you for solace.
I wished us
enemies: tell me why
you gave me a meadow's excess
of flowers,
and a starry sky -
all the curse of your loveliness?
Crueller than
northern nights,
sweeter than golden wine,
brief as a gipsy girl's
love,
your fearful hand on mine…
Trampling dear and holy things,

was such a fatal pleasure,
and this passion, so bitter,
was the
heart's wild delight!
The Artist
In the heat of summer, and snow-dark winter,
on days of funerals,
festival, marriage,
I wait for a faint, inaudible ringing
to relieve my
deadly boredom.
It's here - it rises. With cold concentration,
I wait
to know it, skewer it, kill it.
And, as I wait, intently,
it spins a finest
thread before me.
A wind from the sea? Or miraculous birds

singing in Heaven's leaves? Time still?
White blossom spilt from the
May-time
apple trees? An angel goes past?
An hour carries the
weight of the earth.
Sound, motion and light expand.
The past sees
itself in the future's glass.
There is no Now. And pity? - None.
And
at the dawn of a new soul's birth,
of unknown powers, a curse -
that
strikes the soul like lightning,
creative reason conquers - and kills.

And I closed in its chilly cage
the ethereal, free, gentle bird,
that
wanted to take away death,
and flew down to save the soul.

Here is
my cage - solid steel,
gleaming gold with the sunset fire.
Here is the
bird - once all happiness,
on its swing now, singing near the glass.

Wings clipped, its songs learnt by heart.
You like to stand under my
window?
Pleased with the songs? But, tired of suffering,
I wait for
the new - and I feel the boredom.
Marína Tsvetáeva (1892-1941)
Attempted Jealousy
What's it like with another woman -
Simpler? - a flash of the oar! -


Did the memory of me
soon fade off-shore,
like the beach of a
floating island,
(in the sky - not in the sea!)
Souls, souls! You'll be
sisters,
not lovers - that's what you'll be!
What's life like with an
ordinary
woman? Now that you've dethroned
your idol (renounced
the throne).
Without the divinity?
What's your life like - occupation
-
shrivelled? Getting up - what's it like?
What do you pay, poor man,

for endless triviality - the price?
'I'm through with hysteria,
convulsions!
I'll rent a place, have done!'
What's it like with a
common
woman, my chosen one?
More suitable and edible -
the
food? Boring? - Don't complain…
What's it like with an imitation -

you who climbed the holy Mount? A strain?
What's your life like
with a stranger,
a worldly soul. Well? - Is it love?
Like the god's
whip, does shame
not lash your head from above?
What's it like -
your health -
how is it? How do you sing?
How do you cope, poor
man,
with the festering sore of endless conscience?
What's life like
with a marketable
purchase? The price - terrible?
What's it like with
crumbling plaster of Paris
after the finest Carrara marble?
(The
Goddess made from stone -
and smashed to bits!)
What's your life
like with one of millions,
you, who've known Lilith?
Does the
marketable purchase meet
your needs? Now magic's dead,
what's
your life like with a mortal
woman, neither using the sixth sense?


Well, swear, are you happy, then?
No? What's your life like in a pit

with no depth, my love? Harder,
or just like mine with another man?
Anna Akhmátova (1889-1966)
Intimacy
In human intimacy there's a secret border:
love's being,
love's passion, cannot pass -
though lips are sealed together in sacred
silence,
though the heart breaks in two with longing.
And friendship
too is powerless, and years
of sublime flame-filled happiness
when
the soul itself is free, and has no
knowledge of slow languid
sensuality.
Those who try to reach that boundary are mad,
and those
who have - are filled with anguish.
Now you know why it is my heart


does not beat beneath your hand.
Immortal Love
Desolate the victories
of mysterious non-meeting,
phrases unspoken,

voiceless words.
Un-meeting glances
not knowing where to rest:

and tears alone are glad
to go on flowing.
Wild roses, ah, near
Moscow
are in it! Who knows why…
and all this will be called

immortal love.
Osip Mandel´shtám (1891-1938)
St. Petersburg
We shall meet
again in Petersburg,
as if it were there we buried the sun,
and speak
as if for the first time
the sacred meaningless word.
In the dark
velvet of the soviet night,
the velvet of the earth's emptiness,

women, blessed, sing with beloved eyes,
flowers still flower
everlastingly.
The city arches like a lynx,
there's a patrol on the
bridge,
an angry engine speeds through the murk
and sounds out
with a cuckoo's sound.
I need no pass tonight,
I'm not afraid of the
guards:
for the sacred meaningless word
I pray in the soviet night.

Amongst the theatre's soft rustling
I hear a girl's startled: 'Ah!'

And Cypris holds everlasting
roses, clasped in her soft arms.
We
warm ourselves, bored, by a fire,
perhaps centuries will pass,
and
women, blessed, with beloved hands,
will gather the weightless ash.

Somewhere Orphean choirs