The Hour of the Soul - Marina Tsvetayeva

The Hour of the Soul

1

 At the deep hour of the soul and night,
Not figured yet on any clock,
Into a young boy's eyes I led my sight
Not figured yet as a double lock

On the flow of nights for anyone,
Pond filled to oblivion, to the rims,
And resting tranquilly.
                                    From now on
Your life gets underway, begins.

The greying Roman she-wolf's eye,
Espying in her nursling - Rome.
Dream-conjuring maternity
Of the rock... There is no name, no home

For my perplexities... I've shed
My every veil, have grown from loss.
Thus kneeling, bowing down her head
Over the wicker basket was

Egypt's daughter...

[14 July 1923]

2

At the deep hour of the soul,
Deep hour - nocturnal...
(Gigantic stride of the soul,
Soul in night's hold.)

At that hour, soul, rule all
The worlds you will
To govern - palaces of soul,
Soul, rule them all.

Make rusty your lips, with snow
Powder your lashes
(Atlantic sigh of soul,
Soul in night's hold...)

Soul, with darkness kohl
The eyes where like Vega
You arise... Of sweetest fruit
Make bitter gall.

Make bitter, dark as coal.
Grow great: and rule.

[8 August 1923]

3

For the soul there's an hour, as there is for the moon,
For the owl, the gloom, the dark.
For the soul there's an hour as there was for the tune,
In Saul's dream, of David's harp...

Vanity, tremble at that hour,
Wash away your rouge and your shine.
For the soul there's an hour like the thundershower,
My child, and this hour is mine.

The hour of the breast's most precious depths,
The breaking of a dam.
All things are torn from familiar berths,
All secrets from each mouth's clam,

All veils from eyes. All footprints led
To their source. All the notes unstuck
From their staves. The soul's hour is the hour of Dread,
My child, and that hour has struck.

'O Dread of mine.' That's what you'll coak.
Thus, tortured by the knife
The surgeon plies, children reproach
Their mother: 'Why are we alive?'

And she, with her hands' cool palms relieves
Their fever. 'It must be. Rest.'
'My child, the Soul's hour is like the knife's.
But the knife is blessed.'

[14 August 1923]

Marina Tsvetayeva. Selected Poems.Translated by David McDuff. Highgreen: Bloodaxe Books, 1991.

land loss

someone I know posted an RIP message on facebook today, and the message began, "As a child I lived in a small no exit street surrounded by other kids my own age. Our mums were stay at home mums with open doors so we rocked from house to house, and which ever house we were in come 5pm was where we ate dinner. It was a childhood of playing stuck in the mud out on the road while practising blowing bubbles with our gum (we throught we were so cool), making tree huts and pelting i

nnocent pedestrians with acorns...."

I didn't know the person who died - one of the other kids - but the message startled me because I was also living in that street. I was late on the block, arriving aged ten - but the experience she described was almost completely unrecognisable to me. It's still a feeling of shock and actual pride and relief to see that so clearly. That my mum had never been a stay at home mum, that by the time I arrived there I had lived in 8 other houses and been to 5 other schools, that my parents were divorced and remarried and spent most of their time shouting at each other, that I'd been living next to an erupting volcano, had walked over a village smothered in ash-mud, had seen a dead body and the insides of several typhoons, had been tended by maids and endlessly touched by strangers in the street. And I was not allowed a tree-hut! Settling in in the little cul-de-sac, which every five years featured in a national magazine as the most 'normal' street in the whole country, was the pits. I used to watch those kids out the french doors until my parents would yell at me to go make friends with them and there was nothing I hated more than being forced to go and try to somehow start a conversation with my face burning. I had no idea why I didn't fit in. 

When I read the message I had a wave of anger and jealousy and then a wave of crowing - that's REAL, that difference was real. And now less of those and more... something else. later.

Dreamed last night I was with family on a large river in Malaysia - going up  the river on a barge or a boat, up alongside the river houses. We had a place to stay, No 14, I think, and we were looking for which one it was. A family holiday. My mum and stepdad, siblings, N. Across the river many Malays were travelling up in canoes. I was surprised to see teenaged boys and girls rowing canoes together, laughing and teasing each other. Then I saw other boats with just girls in hijabs, serious, or just boys. I thought yes, some are devout and some are not.

I was holding my mother's two small children in my arms. The one-year-old boy, and the three-year-old girl. They were sleeping in my arms. I thought the boy was sleeping so soundly because I was holding him. For a moment I wondered if he were dead, but I put my hand on his little chest to check his breathing and he was not, he was just deeply asleep.

I didn't wake him, but then my little girl woke up, smiling and laughing that she was in my arms together with him. 

I would like to publish the new book *without* any of the old things, the two chapbooks. There is a different voice that  comes together in the black valley, continues through soft shroud. but not enough material, and time, time, work. because of the work pressures I have to try to get it out, regardless I think. :(

Last night I was in a bathroom, there was some renovation going on. N and my stepdad were around. There was a small rectangular hole in the bathroom wall by the door, and a kitten in the hole. The kitten fit in there perfectly and was sleeping sweetly. Later a toddler (my daughter?) was picking the cat up by the tail - I was horrified that she had the instinct to do that, didn't know automatically, then I realised I had to teach her.

I'm calling the book Cannonball Tree. I like this title 80%.