From: ibshambat@gmail.com

My ancestor was a rider,
A thief, man with violin.
Is this not why my taste wanders
And hair smells of wind?

Does not he steal from a car,
Tan, apricots with my hand,
The author of my passionate fate,
Hook-nosed and curly-haired.

Twirling between teeth a wild rose
He wondered at tiller with plough..
He was a bad comrade - and wild
And tender he was at love!

Moon, beads, pipe and neighboring girls -
All of them - he loved.
I also think that my yellow-eyed
Ancestor was a coward.

That, having sold soul to Devil for a pence
At midnight he did not go
By cemetery; that he carried a knife
Behind a boot-leg, so.

That many a time from a corner he jumped
Like a cat, agile and thin..
And somehow I understood that he did
Not play on a violin.

And somehow all was not fitting to him,
Like in the summer - last year's snow.
Such a violinist my ancestor was.
I became such a poet - so.

By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambat/

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