Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
{a lover of Autumn, it is important to be with her at this moment}
Loneliness
So many stones are thrown at me, / They no longer scare. / Fine, now, is the snare, / Among high towers a high tower. / I thank its builders: may / They never need a friend. / Here I can see the sun rise earlier / And see the glory of the day's end. / And often into the window of my room / Fly the winds of a northern sea, / A dove eats wheat from my hands... / And the Muses's sunburnt hand / Divinely light and calm / Finishes the unfinished page.
Statue in Tsarskoye Selo
Already the leaves of the maple / Are falling on the swanpool, / and on the bloodstained bushes / Of the late-ripening rowan. // And, dazzlingly slender, / Her crossed legs never cold, / Sitting on the northern stone, / She gazes away along the roads. // I felt confused and fearful / Before this girl whom Pushkin sang, / Beams of the fading light / Playing on her shoulders. // For how can I forgive her / The pleasure of enamoured praise... / See - so elengantly naked, / She's happy being sad.
Summer Garden
I want to visit the roses / In that lonely / Park where the statues remember me young / And I remember them under the water / of the Neva. In the fragrant quiet between the limes of Tsarskoye I hear / A creak of masts. And the swan swims / Still, admiring its lovely / Double. And a hundred thousand steps, / Friend and enemy, enemy and friend, / Sleep. Endless is the procession of shades. / Between granite vase and palace door. / There my white nights / Whisper of someone's discreet exalted / Love. And everything is mother- / of-pearl and jasper, / But the light's source is a secret.
Untitled
If all who have begged help / From me in this world, / all the holy innocents, / Broken wives, and cripples, / The imprisoned, the suicidal - / If they had sent me one kopeck / I should have become 'richer / Than all Egypt'... / But they did not send me kopecks, / Instead they shared with me their strength, / And so nothing in the world / Is stronger than I, / And I can bear anything, even this.
