by Anna Akhmatova
Now the pillow’s
Hot on both sides.
A second candle
Dies, the ravens cry
Endlessly.
No sleep all night,
Too late to think of sleep…
How unbearably white
The blind’s white deep.
Hello, Morning!
Now the pillow’s
Hot on both sides.
A second candle
Dies, the ravens cry
Endlessly.
No sleep all night,
Too late to think of sleep…
How unbearably white
The blind’s white deep.
Hello, Morning!
Oh, there’s no reason for sighs,
Sadness is pointless, a crime,
Here, from grey canvas, I rise,
Vaguely, strangely through time.
Arms lifted, freely curtailed,
A tormented smile on my face,
I was forced to become like
Oh, and the day was cold,
In Peter’s wondrous city!
The sunset a crimson bonfire,
And slow shadows thickened.
Let him not long for my eyes,
Prophetic and unchanging,
He will have a lifetime of verse,
The
Let the organ peal out once more,
Like a first spring thunderstorm;
From behind your bride’s shoulder,
My half-closed eyes will gaze.
Farewell, goodbye, be happy my friend,
Ireturn you your sweet vow,
But don’t let your
Caged in this savage capital,
We have forgotten forever
The townships, the lakes, the steppes,
The dawns, of our great motherland.
In the circuit of blood-stained days and nights,
A bitter languor overcomes us…
No one wishes
Like a white stone deep in a draw-well lying,
As hard and clear, a memory lies in me.
I cannot strive nor have I heart for striving:
It is such pain and yet such ecstasy.
It seems
Give me comfortless seasons of sickness,
Visitations of wrath and of wrong
On my house; Lord, take child and companion,
And destroy the sweet power of song.
Thus I pray at each matins, each vespers,
After these
Like a white stone in a well’s depths,
A single memory remains to me,
That I can’t, won’t fight against:
It’s happiness – and misery.
Ithink someone who gazed full
In my eyes, would see it straight.
To the right, wasteland by the cemetery,
Beyond it the river’s dull blue.
You said: ‘Go, get thee, to a nunnery
Or get a fool to marry you…’
Though that’s always how Princes speak,
Still, I’ve remembered
Like one betrothed I receive
A letter at each day’s end,
And late at night conceive
An answer for my friend.
‘On my journey to the dark,
I’m staying with white death.
Do no harm, my gentle