Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 49/?

We return to Marina Tsvetaeva today, as well as giving readers perhaps a pleasant break from the eight-line ABAB CDCD rhyme schemes that have been the form of the last few poems I’ve translated. This one is a very unusual structure: three-line verses, with two longer lines and a short one, but contrary to usual appearances of this form, the third line of each verse doesn’t rhyme. I flipped the mentions of “threshold” and “door” to make the rhymes work. It may have been a quick sketch, writing down the strange sensations of going to her lover past a church. 

I can understand. 

* * *

So to reach his lips and bed,
Past God’s Church all great and dread
I must go.

Past the black funeral hearses,
Wedding coach-and-fours.
Angels set a seal forbidden
Laid across his doors.

So in dark of moon night, past
Guardians of iron cast,
Keen-eyed gates —

To a threshold singing loud
Through the haze of incense cloud
I must rush

As from age, all ages seeing,
Human beings to human beings
Rush past God.

Marina Tsvetaeva, August 15, 1916; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, September 10, 2019.