A COLLECTION OF POEMS

BY

ANNA AKHMATOVA
(Born 1889, Died 1966)

(Translations from Russian)

Anna Akhmatova is the literary pseudonym of Anna Andreevna

Gorenko. Her first husband was Gumilev, and she too became one of
the leading Acmeist poets. Her second book of poems, Beads (1914),
brought her fame. Her earlier manner, intimate and colloquial,
gradually gave way to a more classical severity, apparent in her
volumes The Whte Flock (1917) and Anno Domini MCMXXI (1922).
The growing distaste which the personal and religious elements in her
poetry aroused in Soviet officialdom forced her thereafter into long
periiods of silence; and the poetic masterpieces of her later years, A
Poem without a Hero and Requiem, were published abroad.

From "The Heritage of Russian Verse," by Dimitri Obolensky

Click here to see what the World Wide Web offers in terms of works, biography, and
gossips about Anna Akhmatova.
Last Modification Date: September 20, 2002
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 Alexander By Thebes
(From "The Little Antic Poems")
1961
I think, the king was fierce, though young,
When he proclaimed, “You’ll level Thebes with ground.”
And the old chief perceived this city proud,
He’d seen in times that are in sagas sung.
Set all to fire! The king listed else
The towers, the gates, the temples – rich and thriving…
But sank in thoughts, and said with lighted face,
“You just provide the Bard Home’s surviving.”

Translated by Tanya Karshtedt, 1998

Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, January, 2002

"Along the Hard Crust..."

1917
Along the hard crust of deep snows,
To the secret, white house of yours,
So gentle and quiet – we both
Are walking, in silence half-lost.
And sweeter than all songs, sung ever,
Are this dream, becoming the truth,
Entwined twigs’ a-nodding with favor,
The light ring of your silver spurs...

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, July, 2002

Edited by Tatiana Piotroff, September, 2002

"As a White Stone..."

1916
As a white stone in the well's cool deepness,
There lays in me one wonderful remembrance.
I am not able and don't want to miss this:
It is my torture and my utter gladness.

I think, that he whose look will be directed

Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.
He will become more thoughtful and dejected
Than someone, hearing a story of a dole.

I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness,

Men into things, not killing humane senses.
You've been turned in to my reminiscences
To make eternal the unearthly sadness.
Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2000
Edited by Orit Bonver, August, 2000

"I Don't Like Flowers..."

I don't like flowers - they do remind me often
Of funerals, of weddings and of balls;
Their presence on tables for a dinner calls.

But sub-eternal roses' ever simple charm

Which was my solace when I was a child,
Has stayed - my heritage - a set of years behind,
Like Mozart's ever-living music's hum.

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2001

Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, August, 2001

"If the Moon On the Skies..."

If the moon on the skies does not roam,
But cools, like a seal above,
My dead husband enters the home
To read the letters of love.

He remembers the box, made of oak,

With the lock, very secret and odd,
And spreads through a floor the stroke
Of his feet in the iron bond.

He watches the times of the meetings

And the signatures' blurry set.
Hasn't had he sufficiently grievings
And pains in this word until that?

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2000

Edited by Orit Bonver, August 2000

In the Evening
1913
The garden's music ranged to me
With dole that's beyond expression.
The frozen oysters smelled with freshness
And sharpness of the northern sea.

He told me, "I'm the best of friends!",

And gently touched my gown's laces.
Oh, how differs from embraces
The easy touching of these hands.

Like that they pet a cat, a bird...

Or watch the girls that run the horses....
And just a quiet laughter poses
Under his lashes' easy gold.

And the distressing fiddles' voice

Sings me from haze that's low flowed,
"Thank holly heaven and rejoice --
You are first time with your beloved."

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2000

Edited by Orit Bonver, August 2000

Muse
1924
When, in the night, I wait for her, impatient,
Life seems to me, as hanging by a thread.
What just means liberty, or youth, or approbation,
When compared with the gentle piper's tread?

And she came in, threw out the mantle's edges,

Declined to me with a sincere heed.
I say to her, "Did you dictate the Pages
Of Hell to Dante?" She answers, "Yes, I did."

Music 1958
Something of hea Music vens ever burns in it,
I like to watch its wondrous facets' growth.
It speaks with me in fate's non-seldom fits,
When others fear to approach close.

When the last of friends had looked away

From me in grave, it lay to me in silence,
And sang as sing a thunderstorm in May,
As if all flowers began to talk in gardens.

Our Native Earth

1961

There are not any people in the world --

So simple, lofty, tearless -- like us.1922
We do not carry it in lockets on the breast,
And do not cry about it in poems,
It does not wake us from the bitter rest,
And does not seem to us like Eden promised.
In our hearts, we never try to treat
This as a subject for the bargain row,
While being ill, unhappy, spent on it,
We even fail to see it or to know.
Yes, this dirt on the feet suits us fairly,
Yes, this crunch on the teeth suits us just,
And we trample it nightly and daily --
 This unmixed and non-structural dust.
But we lay into it and become it alone,
And therefore call this earth so freely -- my own.

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2000

Edited by Orit Bonver, August 2000

Reading 'Hamlet'
1

The lot by the graves was a dusty hot land;

The river behind -- blue and cool.
You told me, "Well, go to a convent,
Or go marry a fool..."
Princes always say that, being placid or fierce,
But I cherish this speech, short and poor --
Let it flow and shine through a thousand years,
Like from shoulders do mantles of fur.

And, as if in wrong occasion,

I said, "Thou," else...
And an easy smile of pleasure
Lit up dear face.

From such lapses, told or mental,

Every cheek would blaze.
I love you as forty gentle
Sisters love and bless.

© Copyright, 1996
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt, June 1996,
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, July 1996.

Requiem
1935-1940
Not under foreign skies protection
Or saving wings of alien birth –
I was then there – with whole my nation –
There, where my nation, alas! was.

1961

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

In the awful days of the Yezhovschina I passed seventeen months in the

outer waiting line of the prison visitors in Leningrad. Once, somebody
‘identified’ me there. Then a woman, standing behind me in the line,
which, of course, never heard my name, waked up from the torpor,
typical for us all there, and asked me, whispering into my ear (all
spoke only in a whisper there):
“And can you describe this?”
And I answered:
“Yes, I can.”
Then the weak similarity of a smile glided over that, what had once
been her face.

April 1, 1957; Leningrad

DEDICATION

The high crags decline before this woe,

The great river does not flow ahead,
But they’re strong – the locks of a jail, stone,
And behind them – the cells, dark and low,
And the deadly pine is spread.
For some one, somewhere, a fresh wind blows,
For some one, somewhere, wakes up a dawn –
We don’t know, we’re the same here always,
We just hear the key’s squalls, morose,
And the sentry’s heavy step alone;
Got up early, as for Mass by Easter,
Walked the empty capital along
To create the half-dead peoples’ throng.
The sun downed, the Neva got mister,
But our hope sang afar its song.
There’s a sentence… In a trice tears flow…
Now separated, cut from us,
As if they’d pulled out her heart and thrown
Or pushed down her on a street stone –
But she goes… Reels… Alone at once.
Where are now friends unwilling those,
Those friends of my two years, brute?
What they see in the Siberian snows,
In a circle of the moon, exposed?
To them I send my farewell salute.

PROLOGUE

In this time, just a dead could half-manage

A weak smile – with the peaceful state glad.
And, like some heavy, needless appendage,
Mid its prisons swung gray Leningrad.
And, when mad from the tortures’ succession,
Marched the army of those, who’d been doomed,
Sang the engines the last separation
With their whistles through smoking gloom,
And the deathly stars hanged our heads over
And our Russia writhed under the boots –
With the blood of the guiltless full-covered –
And the wheels on Black Maries’ black routes.

You were taken away at dawn’s mildness.

I convoyed you, as my dead-born child,
Children cried in the room’s half-grey darkness,
And the lamp by the icon lost light.
On your lips dwells the icon kiss’s cold
On your brow – the cold sweet … Don’t forget!
Like a wife of the rebel of old
On the Red Square, I’ll wail without end.

The quiet Don bears quiet flood,

The crescent enters in a hut.

He enters with a cap on head,

He sees a woman like a shade.

This woman’s absolutely ill,

This woman’s absolutely single.

Her man is dead, son – in a jail,

Oh, pray for me – a poor female!

No, ‘tis not I, ‘tis someone’s in a suffer –

I was ne’er able to endure such pain.
Let all, that was, be with a black cloth muffled,
And let the lanterns be got out ... and reign
just Night.

You should have seen, girl with some mocking manner,

Of all your friends the most beloved pet,
The whole Tsar Village’s a sinner, gayest ever –
What should be later to your years sent.
How, with a parcel, by The Crosses, here,
You stand in line with the ‘Three Hundredth’ brand
And, with your hot from bitterness a tear,
Burn through the ice of the New Year, dread.
The prison’s poplar’s bowing with its brow,
No sound’s heard – But how many, there,
The guiltless ones are loosing their lives now…

I’ve cried for seventeen long months,

I’ve called you for your home,
I fell at hangmen’ feet – not once,
My womb and hell you’re from.
All has been mixed up for all times,
And now I can’t define
Who is a beast or man, at last,
And when they’ll kill my son.
There’re left just flowers under dust,
The censer’s squall, the traces, cast
Into the empty mar…
And looks strait into my red eyes
And threads with death, that’s coming fast,
The immense blazing star.

The light weeks fly faster here,

What has happened I don’t know,
How, into your prison, stone,
Did white nights look, my son, dear?
How do they stare at you, else,
With their hot eye of a falcon,
Speak of the high cross, you hang on,
Of the slow coming death?

THE SENTENCE

The word, like a heavy stone,

Fell on my still living breast.
I was ready. I didn’t moan.
I will try to do my best.

I have much to do my own:

To forget this endless pain,
Force this soul to be stone,
Force this flesh to live again.

Just if not … The rustle of summer

Feasts behind my window sell.
Long before I’ve seen in slumber
This clear day and empty cell.

TO DEATH

You’ll come in any case – why not right now, therefore?

I wait for you – my strain is highest.
I have doused the light and left opened the door
For you, so simple and so wondrous.
Please, just take any sight, which you prefer to have:
Thrust in – in the gun shells’ disguises,
Or crawl in with a knife, as an experienced knave,
Or poison me with smoking typhus,
Or quote the fairy tale, grown in the mind of yours
And known to each man to sickness,
In which I’d see, at last, the blue of the hats’ tops,
And the house-manager, ‘still fearless’.
It’s all the same to me. The cold Yenisei lies
In the dense mist, the Northern Star – in brightness,
And a blue shine of the beloved eyes
Is covered by the last fear-darkness.

Already madness, with its wing,

Covers a half of my heart, restless,
Gives me the flaming wine to drink
And draws into the vale of blackness.

I understand that just to it

My victory has to be given,
Hearing the ravings of my fit,
Now fitting to the stranger’s living.

And nothing of my own past

It’ll let me take with self from here
(No matter in what pleas I thrust
Or how often they appear):

Not awful eyes of my dear son –

The endless suffering and patience –
Not that black day when thunder gunned,
Not that jail’s hour of visitation,

Not that sweet coolness of his hands,

Not that lime’s shade in agitation,
Not that light sound from distant lands –
Words of the final consolations.

10

CRUCIFIXION
Don’t weep for me, Mother,
seeing me in a grave.

The angels’ choir sang fame for the great hour,

And skies were melted in the fire’s rave.
He said to God, “Why did you left me, Father?”
And to his Mother, “Don’t weep o’er my grave…”

II

Magdalena writhed and sobbed in torments,

The best pupil turned into a stone,
But none dared – even for a moment –
To sight Mother, silent and alone.

EPILOGUE

I’ve known how, at once, shrink back the faces,

How fear peeps up from under the eyelids,
How suffering creates the scriptural pages
On the pale cheeks its cruel reigning midst,
How the shining raven or fair ringlet
At once is covered by the silver dust,
And a smile slackens on the lips, obedient,
And deathly fear in the dry snicker rustles.
And not just for myself I pray to Lord,
But for them all, who stood in that line, hardest,
In a summer heat and in a winter cold,
Under the wall, so red and so sightless.

II

Again a memorial hour is near,

I can now see you and feel you and hear:

And her, who’d been led to the air in a fit,

And her – who no more touches earth with her feet.

And her – having tossed with her beautiful head –

She says, “I come here as to my homestead.”

I wish all of them with their names to be called;

But how can I do that? I have not the roll.

The wide common cover I’ve wov’n for their lot –

>From many a word, that from them I have caught.

Those words I’ll remember as long as I live,

I’d not forget them in a new awe or grief.

And if will be stopped my long-suffering mouth –

Through which always shout our people’s a mass –

Let them pray for me, like for them I had prayed,
Before my remembrance day, quiet and sad.

And if once, whenever in my native land,

They’d think of the raising up my monument,

I give my permission for such good a feast,

But with one condition – they have to place it

Not near the sea, where I once have been born –

All my warm connections with it had been torn,

Not in the tsar’s garden near that tree-stump, blessed,

Where I am looked for by the doleful shade,

But here, where three hundred long hours I stood for

And where was not opened for me the hard door.

Since e’en in the blessed death, I shouldn’t forget

The deafening roar of Black Maries’ black band,

I shouldn’t forget how flapped that hateful door,

And wailed the old woman, like beast, it before.

And let from the bronze and unmoving eyelids,

Like some melting snow flow down the tears,

And let a jail dove coo in somewhat afar

And let the mute ships sail along the Neva.

"There Are the Words..."

There are the words that couldn’t be twice said,
He, who said once, spent out all his senses.
Only two things have never their end –
The heavens’ blue and the Creator’s mercy.

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2000

Edited by Orit Bonver, August 2000
 "They Didn't Meet Me..."
1913
They didn't meet me, roamed,
On steps with lanterns bright.
I entered quiet home
In murky, pail moonlight.

Under a lamp's green halo,

With smile of kept in rage,
My friend said, "Cinderella,
Your voice is very strange..."

A cricket plays its fiddle;

A fire-place grew black.
Oh, someone took my little
White shoe as a keep-sake,

And gave me three carnations,

While casting dawn eyes --.
My sins for accusations,
You couldn't be disguised.

And heart hates to believe in

The time, that's close too,
When he will ask for women
To try on my white shoe.

"A Widow in Black..."

1921
A widow in black -- the crying fall
Covers all hearts with a depressing cloud...
While her man's words are clearly recalled,
She will not stop her lamentations loud.
It will be so, until the snow puff
Will give a mercy to the pined and tired.
Forgetfulness of suffering and love --
Though paid by life -- what more could be desired?

"Why Is This Century Worse..."

1919
Why is this century worse than those others?
Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm,
It only touched the blackest of the ulcers,
But couldn't heal it in its span of time.

Else, in the West, the earthly sun endows

 The roofs of cities with the morning light,
But, here, the White already marks a house,
And calls for crows, and the crows fly.

"You'll Live, But I'll Not..."

1959
You'll live, but I'll not; perhaps,
The final turn is that.
Oh, how strongly grabs us
The secret plot of fate.

They differently shot us:

Each creature has its lot,
Each has its order, robust, --
A wolf is always shot.

In freedom, wolves are grown,

But deal with them is short:
In grass, in ice, in snow, --
A wolf is always shot.

Don't cry, oh, friend my dear,

If, in the hot or cold,
From tracks of wolves, you'll hear
My desperate recall.

"You, Who Was Born..."

1956
You, who was born for poetry’s creation,
Do not repeat the sayings of the ancients.
Though, maybe, our Poetry, itself,
Is just a single beautiful citation.

Akhmatova, Anna
(än´n khmä´t v ) , pseud. of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko ( ndrā´ vn gôryĕng´kô) , 1888—1966, Russian poet of the
Acmeist school. Her brief lyrics, simply and musically written in the tradition of Pushkin, attained great popularity. Her themes
were personal, emotional, and often ironic. Among her most popular volumes are Chiotki [the rosary] (1914) and Iva [the
willow tree] (1940). She was married to the Acmeist poet Gumilev until
1918. Akhmatova remained silent for two decades. She began publishing
again at the outbreak of World War II, after which her writings regained
popularity. A courageous critic of Stalinism with a large underground following, she was harshly denounced by the Soviet
regime in 1946 and 1957 for "bourgeois decadence."

Bibliography
See her Selected Poems (tr. 1969), Poems of Akhmatova (tr. 1973), and The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1990, in
Russian and English translation); biography by R. Reeder (1995); study by S. N. Driver (1972).
Akhmatova, Anna,
pseudonym of ANNA ANDREYEVNA GORENKO (b. June 11 [June 23, New Style],
1889, Bolshoy Fontan, near Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire--d. March 5, 1966,
Domodedovo, near Moscow), Russian poet recognized at her death as the greatest
woman poet in Russian literature.

Akhmatova began writing verse at the age of 11 and at 21 became a member of the
Acmeist group of poets, whose leader, Nikolay Gumilyov, she married in 1910 but
divorced in 1918. The Acmeists, through their periodical Apollon ("Apollo"; 1909-17),
rejected the esoteric vagueness and affectations of Symbolism and sought to replace
them with "beautiful clarity," compactness, simplicity, and perfection of form--all
qualities in which Akhmatova excelled from the outset. Her first collections, Vecher
(1912; "Evening") and Chyotki (1914; "Rosary"), especially the latter, brought her
fame. While exemplifying the best kind of personal or even confessional poetry, they
achieve a universal appeal deriving from their artistic and emotional integrity.
Akhmatova's principal motif is love, mainly frustrated and tragic love, expressed with
an intensely feminine accent and inflection entirely her own.

Later in her life she added to her main theme some civic, patriotic, and religious motifs
but without sacrifice of personal intensity or artistic conscience. Her artistry and
increasing control of her medium were particularly prominent in her next collections:
Belaya staya (1917; "The White Flock"), Podorozhnik (1921; "Plantain"), and Anno
Domini MCMXXI (1922). This amplification of her range, however, did not prevent
official Soviet critics from proclaiming her "bourgeois and aristocratic," condemning
her poetry for its narrow preoccupation with love and God, and characterizing her as
half nun and half harlot. The execution in 1921 of her former husband, Gumilyov, on
charges of participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy (the Tagantsev affair) further
complicated her position. In 1923 she entered a period of almost complete poetic silence
and literary ostracism, and no volume of her poetry was published in the Soviet Union
until 1940. In that year several of her poems were published in the literary monthly
Zvezda ("The Star"), and a volume of selections from her earlier work appeared under
the title Iz shesti knig ("From Six Books"). A few months later, however, it was abruptly
withdrawn from sale and libraries. Nevertheless, in September 1941, following the
German invasion, Akhmatova was permitted to deliver an inspiring radio address to the
women of Leningrad [St. Petersburg]. Evacuated to Tashkent soon thereafter, she read
her poems to hospitalized soldiers and published a number of war-inspired lyrics; a
small volume of selected lyrics appeared in Tashkent in 1943. At the end of the war she
returned to Leningrad, where her poems began to appear in local magazines and
newspapers. She gave poetic readings, and plans were made for publication of a large
edition of her works.

In August 1946, however, she was harshly denounced by the Central Committee of the
Communist Party for her "eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference." Her poetry
was castigated as "alien to the Soviet people," and she was again described as a "harlot-
nun," this time by none other than Andrey Zhdanov, Politburo member and the director
of Stalin's program of cultural restriction. She was expelled from the Union of Soviet
Writers; an unreleased book of her poems, already in print, was destroyed; and none of
her work appeared in print for three years.
Then, in 1950, a number of her poems eulogizing Stalin and Soviet communism were
printed in several issues of the illustrated weekly magazine Ogonyok ("The Little
Light") under the title Iz tsikla "Slava miru" ("From the Cycle 'Glory to Peace' "). This
uncharacteristic capitulation to the Soviet dictator--in one of the poems Akhmatova
declares: "Where Stalin is, there is Freedom, Peace, and the grandeur of the earth"--was
motivated by Akhmatova's desire to propitiate Stalin and win the freedom of her son,
Lev Gumilyov, who had been arrested in 1949 and exiled to Siberia. The tone of these
poems (those glorifying Stalin were omitted from Soviet editions of Akhmatova's works
published after his death) is far different from the moving and universalized lyrical
cycle, Rekviem ("Requiem"), composed between 1935 and 1940 and occasioned by
Akhmatova's grief over an earlier arrest and imprisonment of her son in 1937. This
masterpiece--a poetic monument to the sufferings of the Soviet peoples during Stalin's
terror--was published in Moscow in 1989.

In the cultural "thaw" following Stalin's death, Akhmatova was slowly and ambivalently
rehabilitated, and a slim volume of her lyrics, including some of her translations, was
published in 1958. After 1958 a number of editions of her works, including some of her
brilliant essays on Pushkin, were published in the Soviet Union (1961, 1965, two in
1976, 1977); none of these, however, contains the complete corpus of her literary
productivity. Akhmatova's longest work, Poema bez geroya ("Poem Without a Hero"),
on which she worked from 1940 to 1962, was not published in the Soviet Union until
1976. This difficult and complex work is a powerful lyric summation of Akhmatova's
philosophy and her own definitive statement on the meaning of her life and poetic
achievement.

Akhmatova executed a number of superb translations of the works of other poets,

including Victor Hugo, Rabindranath Tagore, Giacomo Leopardi, and various Armenian
and Korean poets. She also wrote sensitive personal memoirs on Symbolist writer
Aleksandr Blok, the artist Amedeo Modigliani, and fellow Acmeist Osip Mandelstam.

In 1964 she was awarded the Etna-Taormina prize, an international poetry prize
awarded in Italy, and in 1965 she received an honorary doctoral degree from Oxford
University. Her journeys to Sicily and England to receive these honours were her first
travel outside her homeland since 1912. Akhmatova's works were widely translated, and
her international stature continued to grow after her death. A two-volume edition of
Akhmatova's collected works was published in Moscow in 1986, and The Complete
Poems of Anna Akhmatova, also in two volumes, appeared in 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. Sam N. Driver, Anna Akhmatova (1972), combines a brief biography with a

concise survey of the poetry.
2. Amanda Haight, Anna Akhmatova: A Poetic Pilgrimage (1976), is a critical
biography analyzing the relation of the poet's life to her poetry.
3. Ronald Hingley, Nightingale Fever: Russian Poets in Revolution (1981),
defines the historical and social background of the four poetical titans of 20th-
century Russia.
4. Anatoly Nayman, Remembering Anna Akhmatova (1991; originally published
in Russian, 1989), is a work of the poet's literary secretary who witnessed her
last years.
Anna Akhmatova Poetry
Here's a sound clip of Akhmatova reciting the poem "To the Muse,"
from the video the Akhmatova File.
.mp3 file format 173K
Here are some Akhmatova poems translated into English:

When you're drunk it's so much fun --

An early fall has strung
The elms with yellow flags.
We've strayed into the land of deceit
And we're repenting bitterly,
Why then are we smiling these
Strange and frozen smiles?
We wanted piercing anguish
Instead of placid happiness. . .
I won't abandon my comrade,
So dissolute and mild.
1911 (Paris)
-- translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Originally published (in Russian) in the book Evening, 1912

How many demands the beloved can make!

The woman discarded, none.
How glad I am that today the water
Under the colorless ice is motionless.
And I stand -- Christ help me! --
On this shroud that is brittle and bright,
But save my letters
So that our descendants can decide,
So that you, courageous and wise,
Will be seen by them with greater clarity.
Perhaps we may leave some gaps
In your glorious biography?
Too sweet is earthly drink,
Too tight the nets of love.
Sometime let the children read
My name in their lesson book,
And on learning the sad story,
Let them smile shyly. . .
Since you've given me neither love nor peace
Grant me bitter glory.
1913
-- translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Originally published (in Russian) in the book Rosary, 1914

Somewhere there is a simple life and a world,

Transparent, warm and joyful. . .
There at evening a neighbor talks with a girl
Across the fence, and only the bees can hear
This most tender murmuring of all.
But we live ceremoniously and with difficulty
And we observe the rites of our bitter meetings,
When suddenly the reckless wind
Breaks off a sentence just begun --
But not for anything would we exchange this splendid
Granite city of fame and calamity,
The wide rivers of glistening ice,
The sunless, gloomy gardens,
And, barely audible, the Muse's voice.
June 23, 1915
-- translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Originally published (in Russian) in the book White Flock, 1917.

-Has this century been worse

Than the ages that went before?
Perhaps in this, that in a daze of grief and anguish
It touched, but could not cure, the vilest sore.
In the west the earthly sun is still shining,
And the roofs of the cities gleam in its rays,
But here the white one already chalks crosses on the houses
And summons the crows, and the crows come flying..

Winter 1919
-- translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Originally published (in Russian) in the book Plantain, 1921.

To the Many
I -- am your voice, the warmth of your breath,
I -- am the reflection of your face,
The futile trembling of futile wings,
I am with you to he end, in any case.

That's why you so fervently love

Me in my weakness and in my sin;
That's why you impulsively gave
Me the best of your sons;
That's why you never even asked
Me for any word of him
And blackened my forever-deserted home
With fumes of praise.
And they say -- it's impossible to fuse more closely,
Impossible to love more abandonedly. . .

As the shadow from the body wants to part,

As the flesh from the soul wants to separate,
So I want now -- to be forgotten..

September 1922
-- translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Originally published (in Russian) in the book Anno Domini MCMXXI,

1922.

Wild honey has the scent of freedom,

dust--of a ray of sun,
a girl's mouth--of a violet,
and gold--has no perfume.

Watery--the mignonette,
and like an apple--love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.

1933
--Translated by Jane Kenyon
Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Originally published (in the Russian) in the book Reed, 1924

Anna Akhmatova Images

 The State Russian Museum

Сжала руки под темной вуалью...

I wrung my hands under my dark veil...
Сжала руки под I wrung my hands beneath
темной вуалью... my veil...
"Отчего ты сегодня "Why are you so pale
бледна?" today?"
- Оттого что я - Because I forced him to
терпкой печалью get drunk
Напоила его On sorrow's sour wine.
допьяна.
How can I forget? He
Как забуду? Он lurched outside,
вышел, шатаясь, His mouth was twisted up
Искривился in pain...
мучительно рот... Not touching the banister,
Я сбежала, перил I ran down,
не касаясь, I ran after him to the
Я сбежала за ним gate.
до ворот.
Gasping, I cried: "It was
Задыхаясь, я but a joke
крикнула: "Шутка All of it. If you should
Все, что было. leave, I'd die."
Уйдешь, я умру". He smiled a calm and
Улыбнулся спокойно horrible smile
и жутко And said: "Don't stand out
И сказал мне: "Не in the wind."
стой на ветру".
8 January 1911, Kiev
8 января 1911,
Киев
Мне голос был. Он звал утешно...
I heard a voice. It called, consoling...
Мне голос был. Он звал I heard a voice. It
утешно, called, consoling,
Он говорил: "Иди сюда, It said to me: "Come
Оставь свой край, hither, now.
глухой и грешный, Abandon your forsaken,
Оставь Россию навсегда. sinful land,
Я кровь от рук твоих Abandon Russia, leave
отмою, forever.
Из сердца выну черный And from your hands I'll
стыд, wash the blood,
Я новым именем покрою I'll draw the black shame
Боль поражений и обид". from your heart,
And with a new name I will
Но равнодушно и cloak
спокойно The wounds of misery and
Руками я замкнула слух, loss."
Чтоб этой речью
недостойной But I, dispassionate and
Не осквернился скорбный calm,
дух. Concealed my ears beneath
my hands,
1917 To hinder this unworthy
speech
From soiling my mournful
soul.

Autumn 1917

1889
Born Anna Gorenko to father Andrei, a maritime
engineer, and to mother Inna Stogova, a former
member of the revolutionary group the People's
Will.

1903
Meets Gumilev, her future husband

1907
Graduates from Fundukleevskaya Gimnazia in
Kiev, after having attended Tsarskoe Selo for a
number of years
Her first poem appears in Sirius, Gumilev's
journal, and begins to participate in the Guild of
Poets, the group that would spawn the Acmeist
movement

1910
Marries Gumilev and they travel to Paris where
they meet the then unknown Modigliani, who
painted a drew Akhmatova a number of times
(see left)

1912
First collection Evening appears under the
pseudonym Anna Akhmatova, a name she
takes from her Tatar grandmother. This
collection highlighted the intimate, colloquial,
romantic voice that would characterize much of
her early poetry
Son Lev is born

1914
Second collection Rosary appears Gumilev
leaves her to join the Cavalry

1915
Writes "By the Very Sea"
Marries Vladimir Shileiko, who tries to stop her
writing by burning her poems

1917
Publishes The White Flock, in which her use of
fire thematics come to the fore, and her tone
becomes more severe

1921
Gumilev executed for involvement in
counterrevolutionary plot

1922
Publishes Anno Domini, in which her use of
religious themes increase
She becomes unable to publish, as a forced
silence begins because her apolitical work was
thought incompatible with the new regime

1926-1940
Lives with art critic Nikolai Punin
Works on cycle Reed, poems dedicated to
Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Dante

1928
Officially divorces Shileiko

1935-40

Writes Requiem, her tribute to human suffering,

inspired by the arrest of her son and the purges
of the 1930's

1940
A reprint and new cycle of poems Six Books
appears, but is quickly recalled
Begins writing "Poem without a Hero" on which
she works until her death. This would be her
most dense, complex and layered poem

1943
Evacuated to Tashkent form Leningrad, volume
Selected Verses appears there

1955(?)
Son released from prison and rehabilitated

1958
Edition with new work The Course of Time
appears under her supervision; Seventh Book,
including "Poem without a Hero" also included

1964
Italy awards her Taormina Prize for poetry

1965
Awarded honorary degree by Oxford University

1966
Dies in Domodedovo, as the grande dame of
Russian verse, a patron to young poets such as
Brodsky and Voznesensky
The poet with brother, c.
1905

Sketches of Akhmatova by
Modigliani made in 1911

Akhmatova and Gumilev in

1913
I Taught Myself to Live Simply

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,

to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.

Twenty-First. Night. Monday

Twenty-first. Night. Monday.

Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why--
made up the tale that love exists on earth.

People believe it, maybe from laziness

or boredom, and live accordingly:
they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.

But the secret reveals itself to some,

and on them silence settles down...
I found this out by accident
and now it seems I'm sick all the time.

Solitude
So many stones have been thrown at me,
That I'm not frightened of them anymore,
And the pit has become a solid tower,
Tall among tall towers.
I thank the builders,
May care and sadness pass them by.
From here I'll see the sunrise earlier,
Here the sun's last ray rejoices.
And into the windows of my room
The northern breezes often fly.
And from my hand a dove eats grains of wheat...
As for my unfinished page,
The Muse's tawny hand, divinely calm
And delicate, will finish it.

June 6, 1914, Slepnyovo

I don't know if you're alive or dead...

I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?

All is for you: the daily prayer,

The sleepless heat at night,
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.

No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured

Me more, not
Even the one who betrayed me to torture,
Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.

1915

You will hear thunder...

You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

That day in Moscow, it will all come true,

when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.

Lying in me
Lying in me, as though it were a white
Stone in the depths of a well, is one
Memory that I cannot, will not, fight:
It is happiness, and it is pain.

Anyone looking straight into my eyes

Could not help seeing it, and could not fail
To become thoughtful, more sad and quiet
Than if he were listening to some tragic tale.

I know the gods changed people into things,

Leaving their consciousness alive and free.
To keep alive the wonder of suffering,
You have been metamorphosed into me.

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.

Departure
Although this land is not my own,
I will remember its inland sea
and the waters that are so cold

the sand as white

as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.

I cannot say if it is our love,

or the day, that is ending.

Crucifix
Do not cry for me, Mother, seeing me in the grave.

This greatest hour was hallowed and thandered

By angel's choirs; fire melted sky.
He asked his Father:"Why am I abandoned...?"
And told his Mother: "Mother, do not cry..."

II
Magdalena struggled, cried and moaned.
Peter sank into the stone trance...
Only there, where Mother stood alone,
None has dared cast a single glance.

Translated by Tanya Karshtedt

For Anna Akhmatova

February 1986, on the twentieth anniversary of her death

You, who sang so many poets

and the death of cities and the young century,
your songs have kept us awake when
we should have died.

And may i now living, listen in your release

of the mute screams of a hundred mothers,
waiting before the prison wall,
their lips gone 'blue with cold.'

What is it to endure just one winter,

the childhood willow choked in ice,
the Neva rolling on alone,
or night that teases you, but never comes?

What, to endure your own beauty?

The clap of tall black boots, not dancing naked
feet on the stairs? Your heart beating for a word?
Oh, but the long , dark cloud

--it passes. This day is reborn in your arms!

And sometime, I'll wear your profile,
like a reticent god, where trembling
you translate a different star!

~elaine maria upton

1986 (Boston, Massachusetts)-1999 (Hyde Park, New York)

Requiem
Translation by Judith Hemschemeyer¹

No, not under the vault of alien skies,

And not under the shelter of alien wings –
I was with my people then,
There, where my people, unfortunately, were.

1961
Instead of a Preface
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of
Leningrad.
Once, someone “recognized” me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who l
of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which
everyone had succumber and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):
“Can you describe this?”
And I answered, “Yes, I can.”
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.

April 1, 1957

Leningrad

Dedication
Mountians bow down to this grief,
Mighty rivers cease to flow,
But the prison gates hold firm,
And behind htem are the “prisoners’ burrows”
And mortal woe,
For someone a fresh breeze blows,
For someone the sunset luxuriates –
We wouldn’t know, we are those who everywhere
Hear only the rasp of the hateful key
And the soldiers’ heavy tread.
We rose as if for an early service,
Trudged through the savaged capital
And met there, more lifeless than the dead;
The sun is lower and the Neva mistier,
But hope keeps singing from afar.
The verdict . . . And her tears gush forth,
Already she is cut off from the rest,
As if they painfully wrenched life from her heart,
As if they brutally knocked her flat,
But she goes on . . . Staggering . . . Alone . . .
Where now are my chance firneds
Of those two diabolical years?
What do they imagine is in Siberia’s storms,
What appears to them dimly in the circle of the moon?
I am sending my farewell greeting to them.

March 1940
Prologue

That was when the ones who smiled

Were the dead, glad to be at rest.
And like a useless appendage, Leningrad
Swung from its prisons.
And when, senseless from torment,
Regiments of convicts marched,
And the short songs of farewell
Were sung by locomotive whistles.
The stars of death stood above us
And innocent Russia writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the tires of the Black Marias.

I
They led you away at dawn,
I followed you, like a mourner,
In the dark front room the children were crying,
By the icon shelf the candle was dying.
On your lips was the icon’s chill.
The deathly sweat on your brow . . . Unforgettable! –
I will be like the wives of the Streltsyi[i]
Howling under the Kremlin towers.

1935

II

Quietly flows the quiet Don,

Yellow moon slips into a home.

He slips in with cap askew,

He sees a shadow, yellow moon.

This woman is ill,

This woman is alone,

Husband in the grave, son in prison,

Say a prayer for me.

III

No, it is not I, it is somebody else who is suffering.

I would not have been able to bear what happened,
Let them shroud it in black,
And let them carry off the lanterns…
Night.

1940
IV

You should have been shown, you mocker,

Minion of all your friends,
Gay little sinner of Tsarskoye Seloii[ii]
What would happen in your life –
How three-hundredth in line, with a parcel,
You would stand by the Kresty prison,
Your fiery tears
Burning through the New Year’s ice.
Over there the prison poplar bends,
And there’s no sound – and over there how many
Innocent lives are ending now…

For seventeen months I’ve been crying out,

Calling you home.
I flung myself at the hangman’s feet,
You are my son and my horror.
Everything is confused forever,
And it’s not clear to me
Who is a beast now, who is a man,
And how long before the execution.
And there are only dusty flowers,
And the chinking of the censer, and tracks
From somewhere to nowhere.
And staring me straight in the eyes,
And threatening impending death,
Is an enormous star.

1939

VI

The light weeks will take flight,

I won’t comprehend what happened.
Just as the white nights
Stared at you, dear son, in prison,
So they are staring again,
With the burning eyes of a hawk,
Talking about your lofty cross,
And about death.

1939

VII
The Sentence
 And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready,
I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:

I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again –

Unless… Summer’s ardent rustling

Is like a festival outside my window.
For a long time I’ve forseen this
Brilliant day, deserted house.

June 22, 1939

Fountain House

VIII
To Death

You will come in anny case – so why not now?

I am waiting for you – I can’t stand much more.
I’ve put out the light and opened the door
For you, so simple and miraculous.
So come in any form you please,
Burst in as a gas shell
Or, like a ganster, steal in with a length of pipe,
Or poison me with your typhus fumes.
Or be that fairy tale you’ve dreamed up,
So sickeningly familiar to everyone –
In which I glimpse the top of a pale blue cap
And the hosue attendant white with fear.
Now it doesn’t matter anymore. The Yenisey swirls,
The North Star shines.
And the final horror dims
The blue luster of beloved eyes.

August 19, 1939

Fountain House

IX

Now madness half shadows

My soul with its wing,
And makes it drunk with fiery wine
And beckons toward the black ravine.

And I’ve finally realized

That I must give in,
 Overhearing myself
Raving as if it were somebody else.

And it does not allow me to take

Anything of mine with me.
(No matter how much I plead with it,
No matter how much I supplicate):

Not the terrible eyes of my son –

Suffering turned to stone,
Not the day of the terror,
Not the hour I met with him in prison,

Not the sweet coolness of his hands,

Not the trembling shadow of the lindens,
Not the far-off, fragile sound –
Of the final words of consolation.

May 4, 1940
Fountain House

X
Crucifixion

“Do not weep for Me, Mother,

I am in the grave.”

1
A choir of angels sang the praises of that
momentous hour,
And the heavens dissolved in fire.
To his Father He said: “Why hast Thou forsaken me!”
And to his Mother: “Oh, do not weep for Me…”

1940
Fountain House

Mary Magdalene beat her breast and sobbed,

The beloved disciple turned to stone,
But where the silent Mother stood, there
No one glanced and no one would have dared.

1943
Tashkent

Epilogue I

I learned how faces fall,

How terror darts from under eyelids,
How suffering traces lines
 Of stiff cuneiform on cheeks,
How locks of ashen-blonde or black
Turn silver suddenly,
Smiles fade on submissive lips
And fear trembles in a dry laugh.
And I pray not for myself alone,
But for all those who stood there with me
In cruel cold, and in July’s heat,
At that blind, red wall.

Epilogue II

Once more the day of remembrance draws near.

I see, I hear, I feel you:

The one they almost had to drag at the end,

And the one who tramps her native land no more,

And the one who, tossing her beautiful head,

Said, “Coming here’s like coming home.”

I’d like to name them all by name,

But the list has been confiscated and is nowhere to
be found.

I have woven a wide mantle for them

From their meager, overheard words.

I will remember them always and everywhere,

I will never forget them no matter what comes.

And if they gag my exhausted mouth

Through which a hundred million scream,

Then may the people remember me

On the eve of my remembrance day.

And if ever in this country

They decide to erect a monument to me,

I consent to that honor

Under there conditions— that it stand

Neither by the sea, where I was born:

My last tie with the sea is broken,

Nor in the tsar’s garden near the cherished pine stump,

Where an inconsolable shade looks for me,

But here, where I stood for three hundred hours,

And where they never unbolted the doors for me.

This, lest in blissful death

 I forget the rumbling of the Black Marias,

Forget how that detested door slammed shut

And an old woman howled like a wounded animal.

And may the melting snow stream like tears

From my motionless lids of bronze,

And a prison dove coo in the distance,

And the ships of the Neva sail calmly on.

March 1940

The pillow hot

On both sides,
The second candle
Dying, the ravens
Crying. Haven't
Slept all night, too late
To dream of sleep...
How unbearably white
The blind on the white window.
Good morning, morning!
1909

Why is our century worse than any other?

Is it that in the stupor of fear and grief
It has plunged its fingers into the blackest ulcer
Yet cannot bring relief?

Westward the sun is dropping,

And the roofs of towns are shining in its light.
Already death is chalking doors with crosses
And calling the ravens and the ravens are in flight.
1919
Muse

When at night I wait for her to come,

Life it seems, hangs by a single strand.
What are glory, youth, freedom, in comparison
With the dear welcome guest, a flute in hand?

She enters now. Pushing her veil aside,

She stares through me with her attentiveness.
I question her: 'And were you Dante's guide,
Dictating the Inferno?' She answers: 'Yes.'
1924

Willow

In the young century's cool nursery,

In its checkered silence, I was born.
Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
And, grateful for my love, it lived
All its life with me, and with its weeping
Branches fanned my insomnia with dreams. But
--Surprisingly enough!--I have outlived
It. Now, a stump's out there. Under these skies,
Under these skies of ours, are other
Willows, and their alien voices rise.
And I am silent . . . As though I'd lost a brother.
1940

In 1940
Stanza 5

But I warn you,

I am living for the last time.
Not as a swallow, not as a maple,
Not as a reed nor as a star,
Not as water from a spring,
Not as bells in a tower--
Shall I return to trouble you
Nor visit other people's dreams
With lamentation.
1940
 In Dream

Black and enduring separation

I share equally with you.
Why weep? Give me your hand,
Promise me you will come again.
You and I are like high
Mountains and we can't move closer.
Just send me word
At midnight sometime through the stars.
1946

So again we triumph!
Again we do not come!
Our speeches silent,
Our words, dumb.
Our eyes that have not met
Again, are lost;
And only tears forget
The grip of frost.
A wild-rose bush near Moscow
Knows something of
This pain that will be called
Immortal love.
1956
¹
i
ii