You Will Hear Thunder. Anna Akhmatova

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,