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I know the truth — give up all other truths!
Marina Tsvetayeva
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.
Note: As a young woman, Tsvetayeva witnessed the appalling hardship and suffering endured by her people during the October Revolution and documented it all. Left to bring up her children alone in Moscow while her husband, Sergei Efron, fought with the White Guards, she was often hungry, and survived as best she could.
She and her husband lost everything in the revolution, and their youngest daughter died of malnutrition in an orphanage. Her daughter and husband were arrested by the secret police shortly after World War II began. Loneliness, poverty, and despair eventually drove her to suicide.
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