Thinking of Tsvetaeva
On an evening when it’s about to rain
you take your daughter fishing
The wind plays ripples on the river’s surface
as the hook waits, motionless, for hungry fish
You read that Tsvetaeva's youngest daughter
died of hunger in an orphanage
In the darkness she was looking for a hook
cold enough to hang a whole winter night
Specks of light glimmer on the water
The patter of raindrops rises from the depths
There’s not much rain, but still you open your umbrella
and sit under the tree next to your daughter, sheltering her
What good is poetry? Tsvetaeva asks
‘What if a poem is a world destroyed
as soon as it’s created?’ What if a poem
is the lightest flame in a person’s body
like the streetlamp shimmering on the river?
Has someone lit a fire underwater? Will the water
spread along the rain-sound, extinguishing
the lights on the shore? Silence like darkness, entire
When a poet abandoned by her motherland
hung herself from a hook, was it liberation
or an act of despair? What if a hook
is looking for you too in the night? If reading can kill?
In the darkness, you wield her knife of language
About the translators
Austin Woerner is a Creative Fellow in Chinese-English literary translation at the University of Leeds.
Chen Yushu is an MA student in Postcolonial Studies at the University of Leeds School of English.