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 elephant sneezed
And fell on his knees,
And that was the end of the monk,
the monk, the monk.”
—Unknown. Animal Fair. . .
New Treasury of Children’s Poetry, A; Old Favorites and New Discoveries. Joanna Cole, comp. (1984)
“To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)