Marina Tsvetayeva: "You, walking past me"

"You, walking past me,

not toward my dubious witchcraft --

if you only knew how much fire,

how much life, was wasted

and what heroic passion there was

in a chance shadow, a rustle...

and how my heart was incinerated

expended for nothing.

O train flying in the night,

carrying away sleep at the station...

though I know that even then

you wouldn't know -- if you knew --

that's why my speeches are abrupt

in the perpetual smoke of my cigarettes --

in my lighthaired head--

how much dark and menacing need!"