we who never let each other sleep

I know the truth -- give up all other truths!

No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.

Look -- it is evening, look, it is nearly night:

what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,

the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.

And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we

who never let each other sleep above it.

~ Marina Tsvetaeva

English version by Elaine Feinstein

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

The hunger of the hungry and the fullness of the full

 

 

 

 

If the soul was born with pinions

What are hovels to it, what are mansions?

What's Genghis Khan to it and what his Horde?

I have two enemies in all the world,

Two twins, inseparably fused:

The hunger of the hungry and the fullness of the full.

 

 

 

Marina Tsvetaeva, (1892-1941)

translation by David McDuff

.

(Born in Moscow, she married Sergey Efron who fought with the White Guard. 

 One of her two children died of malnutrition in 1920.  They lived in exile

 in Prague and Paris.  Even though Sergey was secretly a soviet informer

 during their exile, he was executed by the secret police on their return

 to the Soviet Union.  Tsvetaeva hanged herself in 1941.)