Maria Tsvetaeva
The Poet
The poet acquires his speech from afar.
Speech carries the poet beyond the stars.
The obliquities of parables and portents – those
Are the way of the poet . . . Between yes and no
Leaping headlong from the dizzy top
Of a tower, he still contrives to stop
And make a detour . . . Because the poet travels
The way of comets. Causality unravelled,
It’s links dispersed – that’s the law which guides
the poets eclipses. Look up at the sky
And despair, astronomer! For the poet’s path
Can’t be plotted by the curve of a graph.
He’s the one no granite Bastille can hold,
The one whose tracks have always gone cold.
He defies the laws of number and weight,
He’s the train for which everyone is always late.
He asks the questions even Kant doesn’t know
The answer to . . .
Because the poet goes
The wasy of coments, he doesn’t warm,
he burns, he doesn’t nurture – he’s violence and storm –
Poet, the trajectory of your fiery path
Can’t be plotted by the curve of a graph!
Translated by Stephen Capus
Page(s) 234-235
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