Anna Akhmatova

For Anna Akhmatova

Gill Washington Anna Akhmatova, Elaine Maria Upton, Poems , , 0 Comment

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)

Crucifix

Gill Washington Anna Akhmatova, Poems , , 0 Comment

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
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt

Departure

Gill Washington Anna Akhmatova, Poems , , 0 Comment

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.

~Anna Akhmatova

– See more at: https://allspirit.co.uk/anna.html#sthash.BEuCF5mF.dpuf

White Night

Gill Washington Anna Akhmatova, Poems , , 0 Comment

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

– See more at: https://allspirit.co.uk/anna.html#sthash.BEuCF5mF.dpuf

Lying in me

Gill Washington Anna Akhmatova, Poems , , 0 Comment

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

– See more at: https://allspirit.co.uk/anna.html#sthash.BEuCF5mF.dpuf

Willow

Gill Washington Anna Akhmatova, Poems , , 0 Comment

And I grew up in patterned tranquility,
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.

January 18, 1940
~Anna Akhmatova
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer