Poems

Classic Poetry Series

Anna Akhmatova - poems -

Publication Date: 2004

Publisher:

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Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

In Anna Akhmatova, Sappho’s individualistic female voice returns again. Born Anna Gorenko, in Odessa, on the Black Sea, she spent most of her life in St. Petersburg. In 1910 she married Nikolai Gumilev, a poet and leader of the Acmeist movement. He was shot as a counter-revolutionary in 1921. Remaining in St Petersburgh (renamed Leningrad) during the siege in the Second World War, and with her son, and her lover, Nikolai Punin, both sent to labour camps, she came to stand for the voice of an earlier Russia that had neither been silenced nor forgotten. Her great poem Requiem remembers the pain.

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Celebrate 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 Lebyazh’ya’s crazed with crystal art..... Whose soul can compare with my soul, if joy and fear are in my heart? And if your voice, a marvellous bird’s, quivers at my shoulder, in the night, and the snow shines with a silver light, warmed by a sudden ray, by your words? Anna Akhmatova

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

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Departure Hi There! I see you're enjoying the site, and just wanted to extend an invitiation to register for our free site. The members of oldpoetry strive to make this a fun place to learn and share - hope you join us! - Kevin Anna Akhmatova

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Everything 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 were children. Anna Akhmatova

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For Osip Mandelstam And the town is frozen solid in a vice, Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass. Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice, the painted sleighs and I, together, pass. And over St Peter’s there are poplars, crows there’s a pale green dome there that glows, dim in the sun-shrouded dust. The field of heroes lingers in my thought, Kulikovo’s barbarian battleground. The frozen poplars, like glasses for a toast, clash now, more noisily, overhead. As though it was our wedding, and the crowd were drinking to our health and happiness. But Fear and the Muse take turns to guard the room where the exiled poet is banished, and the night, marching at full pace, of the coming dawn, has no knowledge. Anna Akhmatova

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How can you bear to look at the Neva? How can you bear to look at the Neva? How can you bear to cross the bridges?. Not in vain am I known as the grieving one Since the time you appeared to me. The black angels' wings are sharp, Judgment Day is coming soon, And raspberry-colored bonfires bloom, Like roses, in the snow. Anna Akhmatova

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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. Anna Akhmatova

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I hear the oriole's always-grieving voice I hear the oriole's always-grieving voice, And the rich summer's welcome loss I hear In the sickle's serpentine hiss Cutting the corn's ear tightly pressed to ear. And the short skirts of the slim reapers Fly in the wind like holiday pennants, The clash of joyful cymbals, and creeping From under dusty lashes, the long glance.

I don't expect love's tender flatteries, In premonition of some dark event, But come, come and see this paradise Where together we were blessed and innocent. Anna Akhmatova

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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. Anna Akhmatova

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I Wrung My Hands 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 fun. Don't leave me, or I'll die of pain." He smiled at me -- oh so calmly, terribly -and said: "Why don't you get out of the rain?" Anna Akhmatova

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In Memory of M. B. 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, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast. Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain. Translated by Stanley Kunitz (with Max Hayward) Anna Akhmatova

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In Memory of M.B. 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, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast. Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I , I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain. Anna Akhmatova

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Lot's Wife And the just man trailed God's shining agent, over a black mountain, in his giant track, while a restless voice kept harrying his woman: "It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom, the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, at the empty windows set in the tall house where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed." A single glance: a sudden dart of pain stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . . Her body flaked into transparent salt, and her swift legs rooted to the ground. Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn. Anna Akhmatova

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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. Anna Akhmatova

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March Elegy I have enough treasures from the past to last me longer than I need, or want. You know as well as I . . . malevolent memory won't let go of half of them: a modest church, with its gold cupola slightly askew; a harsh chorus of crows; the whistle of a train; a birch tree haggard in a field as if it had just been sprung from jail; a secret midnight conclave of monumental Bible-oaks; and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting out of somebody's dreams, slowly foundering. Winter has already loitered here, lightly powdering these fields, casting an impenetrable haze that fills the world as far as the horizon. I used to think that after we are gone there's nothing, simply nothing at all. Then who's that wandering by the porch again and calling us by name? Whose face is pressed against the frosted pane? What hand out there is waving like a branch? By way of reply, in that cobwebbed corner a sunstruck tatter dances in the mirror. Anna Akhmatova

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Memory of Sun 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. Anna Akhmatova

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Requiem 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 lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear (everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that something like a smile slid across what had previously been just a face. [The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad] DEDICATION

Mountains fall before this grief, A mighty river stops its flow, But prison doors stay firmly bolted Shutting off the convict burrows And an anguish close to death. Fresh winds softly blow for someone, Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this, We are everywhere the same, listening To the scrape and turn of hateful keys And the heavy tread of marching soldiers. Waking early, as if for early mass, Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed, We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun, Lower every day; the Neva, mistier: But hope still sings forever in the distance. The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears, Followed by a total isolation, As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or, Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out, But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone. Where are you, my unwilling friends, Captives of my two satanic years? What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard? What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon? I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell. [March 1940] INTRODUCTION [PRELUDE]

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It happened like this when only the dead Were smiling, glad of their release, That Leningrad hung around its prisons Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece. Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang Short songs of farewell To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering, As they, in regiments, walked along Stars of death stood over us As innocent Russia squirmed Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres Of the black marias. I

You were taken away at dawn. I followed you As one does when a corpse is being removed. Children were crying in the darkened house. A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . . The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold sweat On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1) Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers. [1935. Autumn. Moscow] II

Silent flows the river Don A yellow moon looks quietly on Swanking about, with cap askew It sees through the window a shadow of you Gravely ill, all alone The moon sees a woman lying at home Her son is in jail, her husband is dead Say a prayer for her instead. III

It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't. Not like this. Everything that has happened, Cover it with a black cloth, Then let the torches be removed. . . Night. IV

Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling, The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2) If only you could have foreseen

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What life would do with you That you would stand, parcel in hand, Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in line, Burning the new year's ice With your hot tears. Back and forth the prison poplar sways With not a sound - how many innocent Blameless lives are being taken away. . . [1938] V

For seventeen months I have been screaming, Calling you home. I've thrown myself at the feet of butchers For you, my son and my horror. Everything has become muddled forever I can no longer distinguish Who is an animal, who a person, and how long The wait can be for an execution. There are now only dusty flowers, The chinking of the thurible, Tracks from somewhere into nowhere And, staring me in the face And threatening me with swift annihilation, An enormous star. [1939] VI

Weeks fly lightly by. Even so, I cannot understand what has arisen, How, my son, into your prison White nights stare so brilliantly. Now once more they burn, Eyes that focus like a hawk, And, upon your cross, the talk Is again of death. [1939. Spring] VII THE VERDICT

The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast. Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest. I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone

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Then teach myself to live again. . .

But how. The hot summer rustles Like a carnival outside my window; I have long had this premonition Of a bright day and a deserted house. [22 June 1939. Summer. Fontannyi Dom (4)] VIII TO DEATH

You will come anyway - so why not now? I wait for you; things have become too hard. I have turned out the lights and opened the door For you, so simple and so wonderful. Assume whatever shape you wish. Burst in Like a shell of noxious gas. Creep up on me Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon. Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation, Or, with a simple tale prepared by you (And known by all to the point of nausea), take me Before the commander of the blue caps and let me glimpse The house administrator's terrified white face. I don't care anymore. The river Yenisey Swirls on. The Pole star blazes. The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes Close over and cover the final horror. [19 August 1939. Fontannyi Dom] IX

Madness with its wings Has covered half my soul It feeds me fiery wine And lures me into the abyss.

That's when I understood While listening to my alien delirium That I must hand the victory To it. However much I nag However much I beg It will not let me take One single thing away:

Not my son's frightening eyes A suffering set in stone, Or prison visiting hours Or days that end in storms www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

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Nor the sweet coolness of a hand The anxious shade of lime trees Nor the light distant sound Of final comforting words. [14 May 1940. Fontannyi Dom] X CRUCIFIXION

Weep not for me, mother. I am alive in my grave.

1. A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour, The heavens melted into flames. To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!' But to his mother, 'Weep not for me. . .' [1940. Fontannyi Dom] 2. Magdalena smote herself and wept, The favourite disciple turned to stone, But there, where the mother stood silent, Not one person dared to look. [1943. Tashkent] EPILOGUE

1. I have learned how faces fall, How terror can escape from lowered eyes, How suffering can etch cruel pages Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks. I know how dark or ash-blond strands of hair Can suddenly turn white. I've learned to recognise The fading smiles upon submissive lips, The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh. That's why I pray not for myself But all of you who stood there with me Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat Under a towering, completely blind red wall.

2. The hour has come to remember the dead. I see you, I hear you, I feel you: The one who resisted the long drag to the open window; The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar soil beneath her feet; The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied, 'I arrive here as if I've come home!' I'd like to name you all by name, but the list

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Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look. So, I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble words I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always, I will never forget one single thing. Even in new grief. Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth Through which one hundred million people scream; That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead On the eve of my remembrance day. If someone someday in this country Decides to raise a memorial to me, I give my consent to this festivity But only on this condition - do not build it By the sea where I was born, I have severed my last ties with the sea; Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me; Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours And no-one slid open the bolt. Listen, even in blissful death I fear That I will forget the Black Marias, Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman Howled like a wounded beast. Let the thawing ice flow like tears From my immovable bronze eyelids And let the prison dove coo in the distance While ships sail quietly along the river. [March 1940. Fontannyi Dom] FOOTNOTES

1 An elite guard which rose up in rebellion against Peter the Great in 1698. Most were either executed or exiled. 2 The imperial summer residence outside St Petersburg where Ahmatova spent her early years. 3 A prison complex in central Leningrad near the Finland Station, called The Crosses because of the shape of two of the buildings. 4 The Leningrad house in which Ahmatova lived. Anna Akhmatova

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Shade ‘What does a certain woman know of the hour of her death?’ - Mandelstam Tallest, suavest of us, why Memory, forcing you to appear from the past, pass down a train, swaying, to find me clear profiled through the window-glass? Angel or bird? How we debated! The poet thought you like translucent straw. Through dark lashes, your eyes, Georgian, looking, with gentleness, on it all. Shade, forgive. Blue skies, Flaubert, Insomnia, late-blooming lilac flower, bring you, and the magnificence of the year, nineteen-thirteen, to mind, and your unclouded temperate afternoon, memory difficult for me now – Oh, shade! Anna Akhmatova

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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. Anna Akhmatova

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Sunbeam 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 It's like a golden celebration, And a consolation. Anna Akhmatova

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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 foreseen this Brilliant day, deserted house. Anna Akhmatova

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Thunder There will be thunder then. Remember me. Say ‘ She asked for storms.’ The entire world will turn the colour of crimson stone, and your heart, as then, will turn to fire.

That day, in Moscow, a true prophecy, when for the last time I say goodbye, soaring to the heavens that I longed to see, leaving my shadow here in the sky. Anna Akhmatova

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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. Anna Akhmatova

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Under Her Dark Veil Under her dark veil she wrung her hands. "Why are you so pale today?" "Because I made him drink of stinging grief Until he got drunk on it. How can I forget? He staggered out, His mouth twisted in agony. I ran down not touching the bannister

And caught up with him at the gate. I cried: 'A joke! That's all it was. If you leave, I'll die.' He smiled calmly and grimly And told me: 'Don't stand here in the wind.' " Anna Akhmatova

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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. Anna Akhmatova

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Why Is This Age Worse...? Why is this age worse than earlier ages? In a stupor of grief and dread have we not fingered the foulest wounds and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows, and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun, but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses, and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in. Anna Akhmatova

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Willow 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 strange!--I outlived it. There the stump stands; with strange voices Other willows are conversing Under our, under those skies. And I am silent...As if a brother had died. Anna Akhmatova

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You Thought I Was That Type You thought I was that type: That you could forget me, And that I'd plead and weep And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

Or that I'd ask the sorcerers For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: My precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul Vicarious tears or a single glance.

And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working icon, And by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you. Anna Akhmatova

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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. Anna Akhmatova

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