Anna Akhmatova Poems

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by Akhmatova, Anna

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... ...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

An as it's going often at love's breaking,
The ghost of first days came again to us,
The silver willow through window then stretched in,
The silver beauty of her gentle branches.
The bird began to sing the song of light and pleasure
To us, who fears to lift looks from the earth,
Who are so lofty, bitter and intense,
About days when we were saved together....Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 Celebrate our anniversary – can’t you see
tonight the snowy night of our first winter
comes back again in every road and tree -
that winter night of diamantine splendour.

Steam is pouring out of yellow stables,
the Moika river’s sinking under snow,
the moonlight’s misted as it is in fables,
and where we are heading – I don’t know.

There are icebergs on the Marsovo Pole.
The...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

I
This greatist 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.
Piter sank into the stone trance...
Only there, where Mother stood alone,
None has dared cast a single glance.
...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 Everything’s looted, betrayed and traded,
black death’s wing’s overhead.
Everything’s eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,
breathes out cherry, a cherry perfume.
By night, on July’s sky, deep, and transparent,
new constellations are thrown.

And something miraculous will come
close to the darkness and ruin,
something no-one, no-one, has known,
though we’ve longed for it since we...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

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.
...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 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...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 I wrung my hands under my dark veil. . .
"Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?"
-- Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget. He went out, reeling;
his mouth was twisted, desolate. . .
I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.

And shouted, choking: "I meant it all
in...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.

Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute,...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

Holy Lot  was a-going behind  God's angel,
He seemed  huge and bright on a hill, huge and black. 
But the heart of his wife whispered stronger and stranger:
"It's not very late, you have time to look back
At these rose turrets of your native Sodom,
The square where you sang, and the yard where you span,
The windows looking from your...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 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...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 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...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 Not under foreign skies
 Nor under foreign wings protected -
 I shared all this with my own people
 There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
 [1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 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...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 I pray to the sunbeam from the window - 
It is pale, thin, straight. 
Since morning I have been silent, 
And my heart - is split. 
The copper on my washstand 
Has turned green, 
But the sunbeam plays on it 
So charmingly. 
How innocent it is, and simple, 
In the evening calm, 
But to me in this deserted temple...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

Hail! Hail to thee, o, immovable pain!
The young grey-eyed king had been yesterday slain.

This autumnal evening was stuffy and red.
My husband, returning, had quietly said,

"He'd left for his hunting; they carried him home;
They'd found him under the old oak's dome.

I pity the queen. He, so young, past away!...
During one night her black hair turned to grey."

He found his pipe on...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 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 foreseen this
Brilliant day, deserted...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

Copyright Anna Akhmatova
Copyright English translation by Ilya Shambat (ilya_shambat@yahoo.com)
Origin: http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/akhmatova.html

 * I * 

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.


Unification

I'll leave your quiet yard and your white house -
Let...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 And I grew up in patterned tranquillity, 
In the cool nursery of the young century. 
And the voice of man was not dear to me, 
But the voice of the wind I could understand. 
But best of all the silver willow. 
And obligingly, it lived 
With me all my life; it's weeping branches 
Fanned my insomnia with dreams. 
And...Read more of this...

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by Akhmatova, Anna

 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...Read more of this...

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