Bound for Hell
~ Marina Tsvetaeva
Translated from the Russian by Stephen Edgar

Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,
Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell—
We, who have sung the praises of the lord
With every fiber in us, every cell.

We, who did not manage to devote
Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway
Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat,
Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.

Every morning, every day, we’d rise
And have the finest Chinese silks to wear;
And we’d strike up the songs of paradise
Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,

We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran,
Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been
Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan:
The world was ours, each one of us a queen.

First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled,
Then plaited with a starry diadem;
We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled:
But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,

Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden
Where apple trees from paradise are found.
No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent
And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.

The Garden by Moonlight
~ Amy Lowell

A black cat among roses,

Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,

The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.

The garden is very still,

It is dazed with moonlight,

Contented with perfume,

Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.

Firefly lights open and vanish

High as the tip buds of the golden glow

Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.

Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,

Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.

Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,

Only the cat, padding between the roses,

Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern

As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.

Then you come,

And you are quiet like the garden,

And white like the alyssum flowers,

And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.

Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?

They knew my mother,

But who belonging to me will they know

When I am gone.

Trailer Park Études
~ Conor O’Callaghan

The Lost Hotels of Paris
~ Jack Gilbert

The Lord gives everything and charges

by taking it back. What a bargain.

Like being young for a while. We are

allowed to visit hearts of women,

to go into their bodies so we feel

no longer alone. We are permitted

romantic love with it’s bounty and half-life

of two years. It is right to mourn

for the small hotels of Paris that used to be

when we used to be. My mansard looking

down on Notre Dame every morning is gone,

and me listening to the bell at night.

Venice is no more. The best Greek Islands

have drowned in acceleration. But it’s the having

not the keeping that is the treasure.

Ginsberg came to my house one afternoon

and said he was giving up poetry

because it told lies, that language distorts.

I agreed, but asked what we have

that gets it right even that much.

We look up at the stars and they are

not there. We see the memory

of when they were, once upon a time.

And that too is more than enough.