1691: Where does such tenderness come from? | Marina Tsvetaeva

[exceptindreams]

"Откуда такая нежность?"
Марина Цветаева

Откуда такая нежность?
Не первые - эти кудри
Разглаживаю, и губы
Знавала темней твоих.

Всходили и гасли звезды,
Откуда такая нежность?-
Всходили и гасли очи
У самых моих очей.

Еще не такие гимны
Я слушала ночью темной,
Венчаемая - о нежность!-
На самой груди певца.

Откуда такая нежность,
И что с нею делать, отрок
Лукавый, певец захожий,
С ресницами - нет длинней?

Translated from the Russian by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine

“Where does such tenderness come from?”
Marina Tsvetaeva

Where does such tenderness come from?
These aren’t the first curls
I’ve wound around my finger-
I’ve kissed lips darker than yours.

The sky is washed and dark
(Where does such tenderness come from?)
Other eyes have known
and shifted away from my eyes.

But I’ve never heard words like this
in the night
(Where does such tenderness come from?)
with my head on your chest, rest.

Where does this tenderness come from?
And what will I do with it? Young
stranger, poet, wandering through town,
you and your eyelashes-longer than anyone’s.

We know/the current is there, hidden; and there/are comings and goings from miles away/that hold the stillness exactly before us.