Way of All the Earth. Anna Akhmatova
bring from the conservatory
A whole bouquet of roses.
1910, Tsarskoye Selo
Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
Grass grows yellower.
Faintly if at all the early snowflakes
Hover, hover.
Water becoming ice is slowing in
The narrow channels.
Nothing at all will happen here again,
Will ever happen.
Against the sky the willow spreads a fan
The silk’s torn off.
Maybe it’s better I did not become
Your wife.
Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
What is it?—Dark?
Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us
In the night.
1911, Kiev
Song of the Last Meeting
My breast grew cold and numb,
But my feet were light.
On to my right hand I fumbled
The glove to my left hand.
It seemed that there were many steps
—I knew there were only three.
An autumn whisper between the maples
Kept urging: ‘Die with me.
Change has made me weary,
Fate has cheated me of everything.’
I answered: ‘My dear, my dear!
I’ll die with you. I too am suffering.’
It was a song of the last meeting.
Only bedroom-candles burnt
When I looked into the dark house,
And they were yellow and indifferent.
1911, Tsarskoye Selo
He loved three things alone:
White peacocks, evensong,
Old maps of America.
He hated children crying,
And raspberry jam with his tea,
And womanish hysteria.
. . . And he had married me.
1911
Imitation of Annensky
And with you, my first vagary,
I parted. In the east it turned blue.
You said simply: ‘I won’t forget you.’
I didn’t know at first what you could mean.
Rise and set, the other faces,
Dear today, and tomorrow gone.
Why is it that at this page
Alone the corner is turned down?
And eternally the book opens
Here, as if it’s the only part
I must know. From the parting moment
The unreturning years haven’t departed.
O, the heart is not made of stone
As I said, it’s made of flame . . .
I’ll never understand it, are you close
To me, or did you simply love me?
I came here in idleness.
It’s all the same where to be bored!
A small mill on a low hilltop.
The years can be silent here.
Softly the bee swims
Over dry convolvulus.
At the pond I call the mermaid
But the mermaid is dead.
The wide pond has grown shallow
And clogged with a rusty slime.
Over the trembling aspen
A light moon shines.
I notice everything freshly.
The poplars smell of wetness.
I am silent. Without words
I am ready to become you again, earth.
1911, Tsarskoye Selo
White Night
I haven’t locked the door,
Nor lit the candles,
You don’t know, don’t care,
That tired I haven’t the strength
To decide to go to bed.
Seeing the fields fade in
The sunset murk of pine-needles,
And to know all is lost,
That life is a cursed hell:
I’ve got drunk
On your voice in the doorway.
I was sure you’d come back.
1911, Tsarskoye Selo
Legend on an Unfinished Portrait
There’s nothing to be sad about.
Sadness is a crime, a prison.
A strange impression, I have risen
From the grey canvas like a sheet.
Up-flying arms, with a bad break,
Tormented smile—I and the sitter
Had to become thus through the bitter
Hours of profligate give and take.
He willed it that it should be so,
With words that were sinister and dead.
Fear drove into my lips the red,
And into my cheeks it piled the snow.
No sin in him. I was his fee.
He went, and arranged other limbs,
And other draperies. Void of dreams,
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