Poets

1

Poet - from afar starts a speech. 
Poet - for long leads the speech.  

With planets, with signs, with roundabout 
Tales's potholes... between yes and nay 
He even having swung from the belfry 
Took out the hook... For comets' way  

Is poets' way.  The torn links of causation - 
That's his connection! Forehead up - despair! 
You know that the eclipses of the poets 
Are not foretold by the calendar.  

He's he, who mixes cards together, 
Who does deceive all count and weight, 
He's he, who asks from the school desk, 
Who towers head and shoulders over Kant,  

Who is just like a tree in its own beauty 
Within the stone coffin of Bastille. 
He is a train on which late are all comers, 
Whose traces have been chilled  

Always... For comets' way  

Is poets' way: burning and not warming. 
Tearing, not growing - to break up and tear - 
Your pathway, o the mantled curved one, 
Is not foretold by a calendar!  

2

There are the extras, the unneeded 
That do not fit within the norm. 
(Not counting in your dictionaries 
To them the landfill is their home).  

There are the hollow, the pushed-down,  
There are the mute - like dung, 
Nail - to your silken skirt hem! 
Dirt from under the wheels is wrung!  

There are the unseen, the imaginary: 
(Sign: speck of an autumn hen!) 
There are the Jobs within the world 
That would have envied Job - when: 

We're poets - and in rhyme with scapegoats,
But from the shore thus having gone, 
We argue over God with goddesses 
And argue over girls with gods! 

3

What should I do, blind and a stepson, 
When all have fathers and have eyes, 
When on anathema like embankments 
Of passion! Where runny nose is the  
Name of cry!  

What should I do, with rib and thought 
Singing! - like wire! Siberia! Sunburn! 
Upon your dreams - like on the bridge! 
With their weightlessness 
In weights' world.  

What should I do, singer and firstborn, 
When gray is blackest in the world! 
Where inspiration's like in thermos! 
With this measurelessness in 
Measures' world?!   

By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat 
https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambat