In a sometime relining of note lines Rails, their blueness perilous to eye, Are luxuriating on the linens As do those that on the bed sheets lie! Pushkin's: How many, what is chasing them, To where! (It fled - no more they sing!) Here they all are evermore departing, Here they're sobering and lingering. Here they stay. Pain like a note Towering... Above love all Towering... Like petrified Lot’s wife Into cemetery stones stiffed the poles... O the hour, when sheets have been spread out By despair like matchmakers - Yours! And Sappho that has lost her voice completely Like the poorest seamstress cries in pain. Cry of placability! Cry of a swamp Heron, cry of waterweed... I deem Linens of a railroad being cut, Like by scissors, by a loud scream. O the red unnecessary spot, Flow apart as an unneeded dawn! The young maidens, one after the next, Onto such a linen ever yearn. By Marina Tsvetayeva Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambat
