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:
“Im the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,”
—Archibald MacLeish (18921982)