Allspirit

Category: Anna Akhmatova

  • 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)

  • 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
    Translated by Tanya Karshtedt

  • 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.

    ~Anna Akhmatova

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

  • 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

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

  • 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

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

  • 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

  • Willow

    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