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,