Нас четверо / There are Four of Us

Russian
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О, Муза Плача…
— М. Ц.

… и отступилась я здесь от всего,
От земного всякого блага.
Духом, хранителем «места сего»
Стала лесная коряга.

Все мы немного у жизни в гостях,
Жить – это только привычка.
Чудится мне на воздушных путях
Двух голосов перекличка.

Двух? – А еще у восточной стены,
В зарослях крепкой малины,
Темная, свежая ветвь бузины,
Это – письмо от Марины.


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English Translation

Oh Muse of Weeping…
— Marina Tsvetaeva

… So now I have renounced it all —
soil and all the blessings of the ground.
The spirit-guardian of “this place” — its
heart-ghost — is an old tree stump like
pockmarked steel.

All of us in life were only guests: to live
our lives was this — my only habit.
And now I think I hear two voices calling
to each other from an aerial pathway.

Two voices… but against the eastern wall,
still in my line of tangled raspberries,
the fresh, dark flowering of an obscure
elder branch, as if it were a letter from Marina.

19-20 November 1961, Leningrad,
the hospital in the harbor. In a delirium.

Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com

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