Marina Tsvetaeva addresses a reader born a century later in a poem of August 1919

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