Six Poems
1
waited for him - vainly - many years.
That time seems like a dreaming now.
But an inextinguishable light flared up
Three years ago come this Palm Saturday.
My voice broke off - and died away —
My bridegroom stood before me smiling.
Outside the window people walked unhurrying
With candles. O blessed evening !
Lightly crunched the April’s thin ice.
Above the crowd the bell’s great voice
Like an eternal consolation rang.
And a black wind shook the little lights.
And white narcissi on the table
And the red wine in flat glasses,
I saw them in a sunrise glow.
Spotted with wax my hand trembled
Accepting his kiss, and my blood sang
Exult in triumph, bless’d woman
1916
2
Like a white stone in a deep well
A single memory lies within me.
I cannot struggle, I do not want to
It’s joy and suffering at once.
Whoever looked into my face,
It seems to me, would see it there,
And sadder grow and more preoccupied
Than listening to a tragic history.
The Gods, I know, turned people
Into things retaining consciousness.
So that these marvellous griefs shall live
You’re turned into my memory.
1916
Portrait of Anna Akhmatova |
3. The statue at Tsarskoye Syelo
To N V Nedrovo
Already the maple leaves
float down on to the swans’ pond,
and blood-stained are the bushes
of the slowly ripening rowans.
And dazzlingly slender
on her crossed unfreezing legs
she sits on northern stone
and watches the road.
I felt slightly uneasy
before this much-hymned girl.
Rays of the declining light
played on her shoulders.
And how could I forgive her
the rapture of your praise ?
Look, she is happy grieving,
so sprucely naked.
Autumn 1916
4
The timbered bridge is bent and black.
High as a man the burdocks stand.
Thick nettles whisper to the woods
That sickles pass not gleaming over them.
At evening a sigh is heard across the lake.
And crooked moss has crept along the wall.
There I encountered
My twenty first year.
Sweet to my lips the black
Suffocating honey.
The twigs tore at the white
Silk of my dress.
On the crooked pine
The nightingale was not silent.
At the given signal
He’ll come out of his lair,
Wild as a woodsprite,
Gentler than a sister.
Come at a run across
The fields, swim streams -
I will not reward you
With ‘please go –‘
1917
5
There my shadow stays and pines.
Still lives within the same blue room,
expecting midnight visitors from town.
Kisses the same enamel ikon,
and something is the matter in the house.
The fire blazes, yet it’s dark.
Isn’t this why the new mistress is bored,
and why the master’s drinking wine,
hearing as though behind thin walls
the new arrival deep in talk with me ?
1917
6
In every day there come
uneasy, heavy moments.
I’m talking loudly with despair,
my sleepy eyes unopened.
And it knocks, like blood,
like warm breathing,
like happy love,
wise and wicked.
1917
Ian Robinson - Untitled |
Anna Akhmatova's Russian texts copyright © 1993 by Natalia Gumileva
The rights are granted by FTM Agency, Ltd., Russia
Translated by Geoffrey Thurley
Page(s) 49-52
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