Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

postponed any radical solution to our question. When there is no way out, time is the
best teacher. Isn't that so"
Nothing could fuel Marina's poetic engine like distress: She threw herself into poetry.
One of her most mature poems,“Trees”, was written in 1922-23, and several large cycles
of “Poema”: “Poem of the Mountain”, “Poem of the End”, “The Ratcatcher”.
In the tenth stanza of “Poem of the End” she voices, no, practically shouts her
anguished answer to Sergey's demand for a separation. The poem is also an example of
Marina's “cool and mathematical” reasoning. Even in her most distressed moments she is
able to sharply express her pain:
...Not remembering, not comprehending,
Just a lesser holiday on...
- Our street! - no longer ours ... -
- How many times we walked it - no longer will we...
- Tomorrow the sun will rise in the west!
- Jehova will break with David!
- What are we doing - We are separating.
- That word says nothing to me.
The most senselessly inhuman word:
Se-pa-ra-ting. - Am I one of a hundred
Just a word of for syllables,
Beyond which lies emptiness.
Wait! Is it true In Serbian or Croatian
It means cheating in the Czech Republic.
Sepa-ration! To separate ...
Is insane nonesense!
The sound bursts deaf ears,
Beyond the edge of despair ...
Separation - is not in the Russian language!
Nor in that of women! Nor men!
Not in the language of God! What are we – sheep
To stare at us eating
Separation – In what language is that,
If the meaning doesn't exist
Even the sound! Well, just empty like the
Noise of a saw, in a dream perhaps.
Separation – in the school of
Klebnikov's must mean the moan of a nightingale
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