stanza my stone

gammas & gerunds: Poems for Blok, pt. 1

gammasandgerunds:

Poems for Blok, pt. 1

Your name is a—bird in my hand
a piece of—ice on the tongue
one single movement of the lips.
Your name is: five signs,
a ball caught in flight, a
silver bell in the mouth

a stone, cast in a quiet pool
makes the splash of your name, and
the sound is in the clatter of
night hooves, loud as a thunderclap
or it speaks straight into my forehead,
shrill as the click of a cocked gun.

Your name—how impossible, it
is a kiss in the eyes on
motionless eyelashes, chill and sweet.
Your name is a kiss of snow
a gulp of icy spring water, blue
as a dove. About your name is: sleep.

—Marina Tsvetaeva (tr. Elaine Feinstein), 1916