by Anna Akhmatova
To feel thoroughly ill, to sweat in delirium,
To meet everyone known again,
To roam the broad paths of a sea-side garden,
Filled with the wind and sun.
Today, even the dead, the exiled,
Choose to enter my home.
You are leading a child by the hand,
I have longed for him so.
I’ll eat blue grapes with my dear ones,
I’ll drink the ice cold wine,
And watch how the grey waterfall drops
Into moist, flinty depths.