To Marina Tsvetaeva
You’re right to turn your pocket out
And say: go on, then, rummage round.
I don’t care why the mist is dark.
Anything real is a morning in March.
Trees in soft coats of heavy cloth
Stand in a ground of gluey grey,
Though branches surely can’t enjoy
Being in the thick of so much coverage.
The dew makes every tendril shiver,
It flows like fine merino fleece,
And flees and, like a hedgehog, quivers,
On its brow a dry sheaf.
I don’t care whose the talking is
That floats from nowhere, overheard.
Anything real is a springtime yard
Muffled up with morning mist.
I don’t care how the law’s laid down
For styles of clothing in my time.
Anything real will be swept aside
Like dreams, the poet caulked up inside it.
He’ll wreathe about in plumes and curls
And move like smoke
Out through a fateful age’s holes
To another trackless cul-de-sac.
Pouring out smoke, he’ll tear his way
From crowds of pancake-flattened fates,
And his heirs will say, as in talk of peat,
‘So-and-so’s epoch is alight.’
Translated by Angela Livingstone
Page(s) 113-114
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The