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 body was still resting on its legs, leaning against the end of the side of the bed, while one of the arms was close clasped round the bed-post. The mouth was rigidly closed, but the eyes were open as though staring at him.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)