by Anna Akhmatova
I pray to the ray from the window-pane –
It’s pale, thin, and straight.
All morning I was silent,
My heart – split in two.
The copper of my wash-basin
Is green with verdigris,
But sunlight plays
I pray to the ray from the window-pane –
It’s pale, thin, and straight.
All morning I was silent,
My heart – split in two.
The copper of my wash-basin
Is green with verdigris,
But sunlight plays
For the last time, we met,
On the embankment, as ever.
High water in the Neva,
Fear of flood in the city.
He talked of the summer and said,
How absurd – a woman poet!
I remember
For Yunia Anrep
Is my destiny so changed,
Or the game really over?
Where are those winters I’d go to bed
At six in the morning?
Newly tranquil and severe,
I’m living on a wild coastline,
No
Hands clasped, under the dark veil.
‘Today, why are you so pale?’
– Because I’ve made him drink his fill
Of sorrow’s bitter tale.
How could I forget? He staggered,
His mouth twisted with pain…
Iran down
‘Is this century worse than those before?’
Is this century really worse than those before?
Perhaps, in that dazed by fear and grief,
It touched a blackest sore
It could not heal.
In the west the earthly
He loved three things, alive:
White peacocks, songs at eve,
And antique maps of America.
Hated when children cried,
And raspberry jam with tea,
And feminine hysteria.
…And he had married me.
I taught myself to live simply and wisely, to look at the sky and pray to God, and to wander long before evening to tire my superfluous worries. When the burdocks rustle in the ravine and the… Read the rest
Sunlight fills my room
With hot dust, lucent, grey.
I wake, and I remember:
Today is your saint’s day.
That’s why even the snow
Is warm beyond the window,
That’s why, sleeplessly,
Like a communicant, I slept.
A cast-iron fence,
A bed of pine,
How sweet that I no longer
Need to be jealous.
A bed’s made for me
With sobbing and prayer;
Now go wherever on earth
You wish, God bless you!
Now
A grey cloud, in the sky overhead,
Like a squirrel skin uncurled.
‘I’m not sorry your body,’ he said,
‘Will melt in March, frail snow-girl!’
In the soft muff my hands grew cold.
Ifelt afraid, somehow confused.