Marina Tsvetaeva (live)

Ilya Kaminsky reading Marina Tsvetaeva live at Bowdoin College, February 2, 2006.
In each line’s strange syllable: she awakes
as a gull, torn
between heaven and earth.
I accept her, stand with her face to face.
–in this dream: she wears her dress
like a sail, runs behind me, stopping
when I stop. She laughs
as a child speaking to herself:
“soul = pain + everything else.”
I bend clumsily at the knees
and I quarrel no more,
all I want is a human window
in a house whose roof is my life.

Ilya Kaminsky
Marina Tsvetaeva was published in Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004).
Poem, copyright © 2004 by Ilya Kaminsky
Appearing on From the Fishouse with permission of the author
Audio file, copyright © 2006, From the Fishouse