The Poem of the End (with "The" in the title) is a major poem by the White Russian symbolist poet Marina Tsvetaeva. Written in Prague in 1924, the poem details the end of a passionate affair with Konstantin Boeslavovich Rozdevitch, a former military officer. Each of the sections deals with the crossing of a bridge and the symbolism is echoed relentlessly throughout the poem; the mood is unremittingly tense and foreboding.
- Lovers for the most
- part are without hope: passion
- also is just
- a bridge, a means of connection
(from the Elaine Feinstein translation).
- The happy lot
- Of lovers without hope:
- Bridge, you are like passion:
- A convention: pure transition.
(from the Nina Kossman translation)
Famous quotes containing the words the end and/or poem:
“The day the world ends, no one will be there, just as no one was there when it began. This is a scandal. Such a scandal for the human race that it is indeed capable collectively, out of spite, of hastening the end of the world by all means just so it can enjoy the show.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The poem is the cry of its occasion,
Part of the res itself and not about it.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)