62 quotes
A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together.
Why is this century worse than those others?
Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm,
It only touched the blackest of the ulcers,
But couldn't heal it in its span of time.
Why is this century worse than those others? (1919)
I go forth to seek —
To seek and claim the lovely magic garden
Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.
He is no better and no worse,
but he is free of Lethe's curse:
his warm hand makes a human pledge.
Poem without a Hero (1963)
I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?
I Don't Know If You're Alive Or Dead (1915)
Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.
Thinking of the sun causes quick
beating of my heart —
snowy weather comes on the wind
lightly drifting.
Thinking Of The Sun (1911)
Thinking of the sun makes
my heart beat faster — too fast!
What darkness!
From this night winter begins.
Thinking Of The Sun (1911)
In my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.
We aged a hundred years, and this
happened in a single hour:
the short summer had already died,
the body of the ploughed plains smoked.
White Flock (1917)
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
All has been looted, betrayed, sold;
black death's wing flashed ahead.
Looted (1921)
I have lit my treasured candles,
one by one, to hallow this night.
Poem without a Hero (1963)
The silvery tree opens
to an empty sky —
maybe it is better
that I am not your husband.
Thinking Of The Sun (1911)
You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
Surely the reckoning will be made
after the passing of this cloud.
We are the people without tears,
straighter than you … more proud...
I am not one of those who left the land (1922)
There is no death, each of us knows —
it's banal to say.
I'll leave it to others to explain.
Poem without a Hero (1963)
The sand as white
as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.
I cannot say if it is our love,
or the day, that is ending.
Departures (1964)
Besides
what have poets, in any case, to do with sin?
They must dance before the Ark of the Covenant
or die! But what am I trying to say?
Poem without a Hero (1963)
No foreign sky protected me,
no stranger's wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
survivor of that time, that place.
— 1961
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)