Showing posts with label Anna Akhmatova. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anna Akhmatova. Show all posts

Thursday, March 22, 2012

to slaughter memory






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 
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.






~ Anna Akhmatova
excerpt from Requiem, 
taken from The Complete Poems
with thanks to journal of a nobody

 


Monday, February 13, 2012

A land not mine







A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.

Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine,
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.

Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is inside me again.









~ Anna Akhmatova, 
(1889-1966), 
born in Odessa, grew up in Tsarkoye Selo, 
the imperial retreat outside St. Petersburg.  
Unhappily married to Nikolai Gumilev, the well known poet.










Sunday, June 6, 2010

Everything is plundered


.





Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death's great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?

By day, from the surrounding woods,
cherries blow summer into town;
at night the deep transparent skies
glitter with new galaxies.

And the miraculous comes so close
to the ruined, dirty houses --
something not known to anyone at all,
but wild in our breast for centuries.







~ Anna Akhmatova
from Poems of Akhmatova
 edited and translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward





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