Vox Populi
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Mary Jane White: “For You” by Marina Tsvetaeva
For you, I dissolve a handful of
Burnt hair in the glass.
So you will not eat, not sing,
Not drink, not sleep.
.
So youth give you no joy,
So sugar have no sweetness,
So you will not carry on in the dark night
With your young wife.
.
As my gold hair
Is become grey ash,
So your young years
Will become white winter.
.
So both deaf and blind,
So withered, like moss,
You will leave me,
Like my breath.
From Miles by Marina Tsvetaeva.
Marina Tsvetaeva (1882-1941), admired by Joseph Brodsky: “Well, if you are talking about the twentieth century, I’ll give you a list of poets. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva (and she is the greatest one, in my view. The greatest poet in the twentieth century was a woman.” Translations by Mary Jane White appear in Starry Sky to Starry Sky (Holy Cow! Press 1988); New Year’s, an elegy for Rilke (Adastra Press 2007); Poets Translate Poets, (Syracuse 2013). After Russia: Poems of an Emigrant: After Russia, Poem of the Hill, Poem of the End and New Year’s (bilingual text, Adelaide Books (NYC/Lisbon, 2021).
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