No language is the mother tongue. Writing poetry is rewriting it…. A poet may write in French; he cannot be a French poet. That’s ludicrous…. The reason one becomes a poet…is to avoid being French, Russian, etc., in order to be everything…. Yet every language has something that belongs to it alone, that is it…. French: clock without resonance; German—more resonance than clock…. French is there. German becomes, French is.

Marina Tsvetayeva