Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva

8 October 1892 – 31 August 1941 / Moscow

No Longer Now

No longer now the same god-given bounties
Where now no longer the same waters glide.
Then fly, and hasten, doves of Aphrodite,
Through the great gates that sunset has swung wide.

And I on the chill sands shall lie, receding
Into the dimness of unreckoned days . . .
Like the shed skin the snake is coldly eyeing,
My youth, outgrown, has shrunk under my gaze.
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