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# Marina Tsvetaeva addresses a reader born a century later in a poem of August 1919
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/tebe-cherez-sto-let/
- Published: 2021-03-06T17:33:10.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:08:32.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, People

To You, in a Hundred Years.

To you, who are to be born  
A century hence, when I have breathed my last –  
From the very depths – like one condemned to death,  
I write with my own hand:

– Friend! do not look for me! Another fashion!  
Even the old men do not remember me.  
– My mouth cannot reach! – Across the waters of Lethe  
I stretch out my two hands.

Like two bonfires I see your eyes,  
Blazing for me in the grave – in hell –  
Eyes that see her whom no hand can move,  
Dead a hundred years ago.

With me in my hand – almost a handful of dust –  
My poems! – I see: in the wind  
You look for the house where I was born – or  
The one in which I shall die.

At women you meet – those living, happy ones –  
I am proud of how you look, and I catch the words:  
– A gang of impostors! You are all dead!  
She alone is alive!

I served her with a volunteer's service!  
I knew all her secrets, the whole store of her rings!  
Robbers of the dead! These rings  
Were stolen from her!

O my hundred rings! It tugs at my sinews,  
I repent for the first time  
That I gave so many of them away, crooked and askew, –  
I did not wait for you!

And I am sad still that this evening,  
This very one – so long did I walk behind  
The setting sun, – and towards  
You – across a hundred years.

I bet that you will hurl a curse  
At my friends in the gloom of their graves:  
– They all praised her! A pink dress  
No one gave her!

Who was more disinterested?! – No, I am self-interested!  
Since you will not kill me, – there is no point hiding  
That I begged letters from everyone,  
To kiss them at night.

Shall I say? – I shall! Non-being is a convention.  
You are to me now the most passionate of guests,  
And you will refuse the pearl of all lovers  
In the name of that one – of bones.

*Literal translation*

**Marina Tsvetaeva, August 1919**