by Anna Akhmatova
For Vasily Komarovsky
Such strange words
That quiet April day brought me.
You knew it was still alive in me,
That dreadful week of passion.
I heard no pealing of bells,
Floating in clear azure,
For seven
For Vasily Komarovsky
Such strange words
That quiet April day brought me.
You knew it was still alive in me,
That dreadful week of passion.
I heard no pealing of bells,
Floating in clear azure,
For seven
The just man followed God’s messenger,
Vast and bright against the black hill,
But care spoke in the woman’s ear:
‘There’s time, you can look back still,
At Sodom’s red towers where you were born,
The square
So many stones are thrown at me
That I no longer cower,
The turret’s cage is shapely,
High among high towers.
My thanks, to its builders,
May they evade pain and woe,
Here, I see suns rise
A snake, it coils
Bewitching the heart.
Day after day, coos
A dove on the white sill.
A bright flash in frost,
Drowsy night-scented stock…
Yet, sure and secret,
It’s far from peace and joy.
It knows
My heart was chilled and numb,
But my feet were light.
I fumbled the glove for my left hand
Onto my right.
It seemed there were many steps,
I knew – there were only three.
Autumn, whispering
Memory of sun ebbs from the heart.
Grass fades early.
Wind blows the first snowflakes
Barely, barely.
Freezing water can’t flow
Along these narrow channels.
Nothing happens here, oh
Nothing can happen.
A willow against the sky
The bridge of logs is black and twisted,
The burdocks stand shoulder high,
And a thick forest of nettles sings
Of how the bright sickle will never reap here.
At evening over the lake there’s a sighing,
For O. A. Glebova-Sudeikina
‘What do you see, on the wall, dimly alive,
At that hour when the sunset eats the sky?
A seagull, on a blue cloth of waters,
Or perhaps it’s those Florentine gardens?
Or
The evening light is broad and yellow,
Tender, the April chill.
You are many years late,
Yet I’m glad you are here.
Sit down now, close to me,
And look with joyful eyes:
Here it is, the
My heart beats smoothly, steadily,
What are long years to me?
Under the Galernaya arch,
Our shadows, for eternity.
Through half-closed eyelids,
I see, I see that you’re with me,
And forever held in your hand
Is