Poemas de Marya Zaturenska

Epitafio para una sin cuidado

¡Qué torpe vestiste tu belleza!
Ligera como seda de aire,
Muy pesada para tu alma,
Como si negar fuera deber,
Y ahora suspiras
Por las gracias que se van

La mano blanca, rosa cosquilleo
Capturado en la palidez de mejillas—
Cabalga y asciende con tu pensar,
El fleco suave de oscuro cabello
Que en la amplia frente posó—
Y los ojos de flameante café
Que se adueñan de todo corazón.

Tras la gala aburrida
Una niña rica indiferente
Arroja cada perla de luna
Que posa en sus pómulos pequeños,
Felices, alegres,
O un vestido exquisito,
Tirado al vacío.

Caminaste sin cuidar tus gracias—
Perdida en el fulgor de visiones
o pálida abstracción, sueño fantasmal,
Mientras la sombra del amor te seguía por atrás
Hasta el suspiro final,
Volteaste para verlo morir.

A mitad de aquel camino escuchaste el gemir—
Y de este trémulo oro
La última flecha, ardiendo y enfriando,
Quitando el sello de tu sangre ya no seca
atizando el fuego de hambres
Apasionado, sin abatir

Los fuegos que enfrían tu vida, atormentan la mente,
Hasta la fascinación se escapa,
Y la furia platónica que consumía
Escucha el susurro de amor a cada esquina,
Mira la urna sin fin que ahora se conoce
Brasas felices, ceniza de rosa.

Epitaph for a Careless Beauty

How carelessly you wore your beauty!
Lightly as if ’twere cloth of air,
Too heavy for your soul to wear,
As if to deny your gifts a duty,
Alas, for now you sigh
To see your graces fly.

That white hand, that rosy tinge,
Upon the cheek’s deep pallor caught—
Mounting and rising with your thought,
The dark hair’s soft fringe
That on the high wide forehead lay—
And the eyes burning brown
That no heart could disown.

As after a dull gala-day
A rich indifferent girl
Throws down each moon-clear pearl
That on small ear tips lay,
Precious and gay,
Or an exquisite gown,
Thrown idly down.

So careless of your gifts you walked—
Lost in a vision’s gleam
Or pale abstraction, ghostly dream,
While close behind Love’s shadow stalked
Until with his last sigh,
You turned and saw him die.

In mid-way of your path you heard that cry—
And from his quiver of gold,
The last arrow, stinging hot and cold,
Unsealed your blood no longer frozen dry
Kindling the fires unsated,
Passionate, unabated.

The fires that chill your life, torment the mind,
Even the enrapt vision gone,
The Platonic fury it has fed upon
Hears love’s sigh on every wind,
Looks in an endless urn that now discloses
Embers of joy, ashes of roses.

The White Dress

Imperceptively the world became haunted by her white dress.
Walking in forest or garden, he would start to see,
Her flying form; sudden, swift, brief as a caress
The flash of her white dress against a darkening tree.

And with forced unconcern, withheld desire, and pain
He beheld her at night; and when sleepless in his bed,
Her light footfalls seemed loud as cymbals; deep as his disdain,
Her whiteness entered his heart, flowed through from feet to head.

Or it was her face at a window, her swift knock at the door,
Then she appeared in her white dress, her face white as her gown;
Like snow in midsummer she came and left the rich day poor;
And the sun chilled and grew higher, remote, and the moon slipped down.

So the years passed; more fierce in pursuit her image grew;
She became the dream abjured, the ill uncured, the deed undone,
The life one never lived, the answer one never knew,
Till the white shadow swayed the moon, stayed the expiring sun.

Until at his life’s end, the shadow of the white face, the white dress
Became his inmost thought, his private wound, the word unspoken,
All that he cherished in failure, all that had failed his success;
She became the crystal orb, half-seen, untouched, unbroken.

There on his death bed, kneeling at the bed’s foot, he trembling saw,
The image of the Mother-Goddess, enormous, archaic, cruel,
Overpowering the universe, creating her own inexorable law,
Molded of stone, but her fire and ice flooded the room like a pool.

And she was the shadow in the white dress, no longer slight and flying,
But solid as death. Her cold, firm, downward look,
Brought close to the dissolving mind the marvellous act of dying,
And on her lap, the clasped, closed, iron book.

Places

How red the roses were
In that narrow lane
Where we used to meet,
Met and met again.

I see you sitting there
On a stone stair.
On your golden hair
Fell the enamoured air.

The roses were too red
At our cottage door;
Warm light covered the floor,
Flowed and spread.

The ivy was too black,
The roses were too red.
They withered on the stem–
How I remember them.

Do you remember too?
The sky was far too blue.
Your eyes were far fluer.
(They alone were true.)

We wandered by the sea
Led by a lucky star
Known to antiquity.
How good to breathe the air.

I tired of the cottage wall,
The oak tree, and the yew,
Tired of the falling snow,
There was no place to go.

Tired of the blue and green,
The cold rain and the dew,
The winding, vanishing scene–
Tired of all things but you.

For the Seasons

Burning with heat and cold
In April’s tender weather
I let my tense hands hold
All they could gather of love.

Desire shaking the branch
Of every quivering tree,
Love, like an avalanche,
Destroy8ing me.

Now brightly in the air,
Love’s vivid signature
Is more than I can bear,
I bind my flowing hair.

Let other lovers lie
Under that great tree
Of rich incredible fruit
And make their suit:

O turn their burning look
Upon that vast and deep
Starry-lettered book
Whose lovely meanings leap
In generative lore
A moment and no more.