Marina Tsvetaeva - Mountain Chant

~ перевод "Поэмы горы" Марины Цветаевой

Dedication

You shudder—and a mountain off
The mind, and the soul—up.
O, cliffs of my grief, don't you scoff
At my mountain chant.

This black hole will yawn unsealed
Forevermore.
My cliffy grief, let me sing
At the mountaintop.


I.

That mountain was like a recruit's
Bosom overtopping the battlefield.
That mountain wouldn't excuse
Kissing outside of the sacrament.

That mountain wished to insert
The ocean into the auricle.
With a sudden "hurray!", it would burst,
All belligerent and inexorable.

That mountain was like a roar
Of thunder. One should be wary of Titans!
At the mountain base, you saw
The very last of its houses.

That giant was larger than life!
For life, God charges awfully!
Cliffs of the grief started high
In the mountain. A town was below it.


II.

Parnassus or Sinai would put
This barrack-like, ordinary
Hillock to shame—Dress! Shoot!
Why did then this octobery,
Rather than mayish, sight
Seem to be a delight?


III.

Once too meek and obtainable,
Heaven, expose your barbs!
The mountain came assailing
With obstacles of its scarps.

As if the grip of Leviathan
Clutching the skirt of my dress,
Was shrubbery of the mountain,
It rustled along: "You won't pass!"

Heaven was nowise flattering,
It was one gale of a draft!
The mountain pulled us and flattened us,
It threw its weight right and left.

We forged on and dumbfounded
That giant with our assault.
How could this happen? We found the
Saint as though at fault.


IV.

Garnet seed of Persephone,
You flash when frosts brace the land...
I will hardly stop remembering
Our mouths poised to blend.

That seed—Persephone's tragedy!
I remember your lips set ajar
And your eyelashes shooting jaggedly,
And the golden prong of the star...


V.

Not an illusion or fantasy
Is passion, and far from a bluff
It is! O, if only we've come to here
To be just lowlifes of love!

O, if only we've grappled with
Just that, a hillock, a knob.
(They say it's the longing for precipice
Which brings to the mountaintop).

These brown tangles of heathery,
These languishing pines and moss...
Delirious, delectable heathenry!
Here, take me now! All yours...

Alas! Quiet graces of family
And chatter of young still above...
For on this earth we are meant to be
Celestials, not lowlifes, of love!


VI.

The mountain mourned (it is lime
With which mountains normally mourn).
It bitterly mourned the sublime
Tenderness of our ethereal morns.

The mountain mourned our friendship:
The unshakeable kinship of lips.
Also, it passingly mentioned
The requital for tears, not deeds.

The mountain spoke of this life
Belittlingly, as of a flea market of hearts.
It was streaming its lacrimal lime
Over Hagar's exile and her child's.

"This game is a demon's scheming,
It's nonentity, nonsense, mirage,"
The mountain said. We were quietly heeding
Orations of the mountainous judge.


VII.

The mountain mourned that a boiling ruby
Blood would turn, after all, into mud.
Also, the mountain said that it wouldn't
Allow our living apart.

The mountain mourned that every Rome
Would rhyme in the end with "rammed".
The mountain told us that we home
With others (I don't envy them).

The mountain mourned a terrible oath,
Which is too late to loathe. It said
Of the Gordian knot as overly old,
The one between passion and debt.

The mountain mourned, it felt sorry
For us. Later, above the eyes,
There'll be no "memento", neither "mori",
Just "mare". Tomorrow, we'll realize.

A sound... as if somebody's crying,
Close by—you also heard?
The mountain mourned our separate climbing
Down, through mounds of dirt,

Into life, of which everyone knows:
A marketplace—barrack—"no, please".
Also, the mountain said that all poems
Of mountains—are written—like this.


VIII.

That mountain was like the hump
Of Atlas, the groaning Titan.
That mountain is going to pump
Pride of our town, where

We passionately go on the spree,
Headlong, resisting nothingness!
Alongside the frowning steep
And the dozen evangelists,

You shall honor my somber cave!
(Been there, waves were skipping in!)
You remember last moves of the game
At the township's periphery?

That mountain was like, worlds!
Gods treat their images vengefully!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The grief had sprung from the words
Of the mountain. It weighs on me gravestonely.


IX.

Years will pass, and our mountainous
Hump will be replaced with a slab.
Its summit will host summerhouses
And wheat fields will claim its lap.

They say that air is fresh on the
Skirts, and life there isn't as hard.
They will just go on patchworking,
Reworking its rocky fa;ade.

You'll hungrily spoon all my passes and
Fork over all my ravines!
For people are needy of houses
And happiness to be therein,

Happiness, love with no romances
Or putting yourself on the rack!
You're a woman! So stomach this!
(There was happiness, on looking back,

With him) Love to be fancy-free,
With no separations or knife.
The place where we lived happily—
Now ruins—will see a new life

Of men and women. All they will
Do in that blissful air is sin.
Tradesmen at grass will be chowing
Their riches and, in-between,

Crafting new moves, new levels such
That houses be choke-full.
For people, at least many fellows,
Want storks atop roofs as a rule.


X.

The weight of these foundations
Will not obscure the play.
Good at memorization,
Unlike those going astray,

The mountain will bide. Cottagers
Will fail to patch over clefts;
They'll see: not a homely hurst it is—
A crater ready to blast!

Grapevines can't chain Vesuvius,
The giant will rip apart yarn.
Madness of lips alone will fuse
Rock into lava. Your barns,

Together with wheat fields and households,
Will lavishly taste its wrath.
Your daughters will turn into harlots and
Sons will be poets and stuff.

Daughter, you raise a bastard slip!
Son, she-gipsies are yours!
Let none of your nauseous vices be
Knocking on my lofty doors.

Harder than granite and firmer than
The dying man's oath is this:
Let you not taste, unworthy ants,
My mountainly, heavenly bliss!

Lo! The unforeseen hour
Will strike and make you convinced
Of how paramount is the mountain,
How deadly—your deadly sins!