Selected Poems

translated by
DAVID McDUFF

His diligence with metre and rhyme is remarkably successful, and is the only proper tribute to the poet’s linguistic virtuosity.

‘It must be said right away that those who want to have an inkling of what Tsvetayeva is actually like, and that includes her form, her rhyme, and the tone of that accompanies form and rhyme, will have to go to McDuff.

But for us whose hearts still care

The map holds a location

That’s void: our honour’s there.

Poems grow in the same way as stars and roses,

Or beauty of no use to a family.

To all the wreaths and apotheoses

May you live forever!

Cherish your life.

Only poets in bone

Are as in a lie.

The demon in me’s not dead,

He’s living, and well.

In the body as in a hold,

In the self as in a cell.

This gypsy passion for parting!
We just meet, but already take flight!
My brow’s in my hands, I’m starting
To think, looking out through the night
That those who ransack our letters
Have only perceived by halves
How faithless we are, and that is –
How faithful we are to ourselves.

The rhymes and rhythms of Tsvetayeva’s poems serve a dual function: they are her main compositional device, and they also play an emblematic, even a symbolic role:
In this world there are rhymes.
Disjoin them – and it trembles.

Above all, my translations are offered in what I conceive to be the Tsvetayevan spirit.