Songs of longing!

And they will resound in my letters, just as they always have, sometimes loudly and sometimes secretly so that you alone can hear them… But they will also be different — different from how they used to be, these songs. For I have turned and found longing at my side, and I have looked into her eyes, and now she leads me with a steady hand.”

―from a letter to Lou Andreas-Salome

…As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw you
turn red from me. How could anyone express
what took place between us? We made up for everything
there was never time for. I matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart…

…Lovers were not, Marina, *are* not permitted to know
destruction so deeply. Must be as if they were new.
Only their grave is old, only *it* ponders and darkens
under the sobbing tree, remembering all that has been.
Only their grave collapses; *they* are supple as reeds;
what bends them too far, rounds them into rich garlands.
How they blow about in the May wind! From the midst of
the Ever,
in which you breathe and surmise, the moment has shut
them out.
(Oh how I understand you, female flower on the same
imperishable stalk. How wildly I scatter myself into the
night air
that in a moment will touch you.)…”

―from_Elegy: to Marina Tsvetayeva-Efron_

...We of the here-and-now are not for a moment satisfied in the world of time, nor are we bound in it; we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. In that vast "open" world, all beings *are*―one cannot say "contemporaneous," for the very fact that time has ceased determines that they all *are*."

―from letter to Witold Hulewicz (November 13, 1929)

I think of you at any time of the day and my worried thoughts accompany all your steps. The slightest breath on your forehead is a kiss from my lips and each dream speaks to you with my voice. My love is like a coat wrapped around you to protect and warm you up.”

—from letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé

Do you remember…(doesn’t that appear in each of my letters?), do you remember that you spoke of how eagerly you experienced that period when for the first time autumn and winter were to meet you not in the city, but among the trees whose happiness you knew, whose spring and summer rang in your earliest memories and were mingled with everything warm and dear and tender and with the infinitely blissful melancholies of summer evenings and of long, yearning nights of spring. You knew just as much of them as of the dear people in your surroundings, among whom also summer and spring, kindness and happiness were dedicated to you and whose influence held sway above your growing up and maturing, and whose other experiences would touch you only by report and rarely like a shot in the wood of which superstitious folk tell for a long time. But now you were to remain out in the country house that was growing lonely and were to see the beloved trees suffer in the rising wind, and were to see how the dense park is torn apart before the windows and becomes spacious and everywhere, even in very deep places, discloses the sky which, with infinite weariness, lets itself rain and strikes with heavy drops on the aging leaves that are dying in touching humility. And you were to see suffering where until now was only rapture and anticipation, and were to learn to endure dying in the very place where the heart of life had beaten most loudly upon yours. And you were to behave like the grownups who all at once may know everything, yes, who become grown up just because of the fact that even the darkest and saddest things do not have to be hidden from them, that one does not cover up the dead when they enter, nor hide those whose faces are sawed and torn by a sharp pain.”

―from letter to Clara Westhoff Schmargendorf (Sunday, November 18, 1900)