Why did you taint my water’s chalice, With muck adulterate my crumb? Why do you turn, with easy malice, My final freedom to a slum? Because I’ve not succumbed and taunted My friends’ so cruel passing? And Because I’ve faithful been, undaunted, To my dejected motherland? That’s it – without the hangman’s gibbet There’d be no poets. Penance-cowl And sackcloth garb will not inhibit – We’ll take our candle out and howl.
Зачем вы отравили воду И с грязью мой смешали хлеб? Зачем последнюю свободу Вы превращаете в вертеп? За то, что я не издевалась Над горькой гибелью друзей? За то, что я верна осталась Печальной родине моей? Пусть так. Без палача и плахи Поэту на земле не быть. Нам покаянные рубахи, Нам со свечой идти и выть.
On Victory Day, when misty swirls are tender, And when the sunrise blazes, crimson red, The spring that’s tarried pleads for a defender Through widow at his nameless final bed. She’s in no hurry to get off her knees, She blows upon a stem, the grass she touches, And from her shoulder butterfly she brushes, Its fluff the early dandelion now frees.
И в День Победы, нежный и туманный, Когда заря, как зарево, красна, Вдовою у могилы безымянной Хлопочет запоздалая весна. Она с колен подняться не спешит, Дохнет на почку, и траву погладит, И бабочку с плеча на землю ссадит, И первый одуванчик распушит.
Modigliani’s sketch of Anna Akhmatova. (The original still hangs in her room at the Fountain House in St Petersburg.)
Akhmatova addresses Blok.
You were the first to stand there at the source With dry and deathly glower smirked. And how with empty gaze you worked, That heavy gaze of midnight’s slickened course.
But dreadful years will pass on through, And soon again you won’t be old – And we’ll enshrine the secret cold Of final moment, just for you.
Akhmatova wrote this in 1943. The greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century addresses the greatest Russian poet, who famously delighted in the feet of the ladies on the St Petersburg embankment.
So, who can know what makes for glory! What did he pay to tell the story, For opportunity or grace So sly and wise to cause furore, Present mysterious, silent face And to those dainty feet give chase?
Кто знает, что такое слава! Какой ценой купил он право, Возможность или благодать Над всем так мудро и лукаво Шутить, таинственно молчать И ногу ножкой называть?..
A late poem, from 1960. I’m not at all sure I’ve worked out the last couplet.
Past’s path long ago was barricaded,
Now I wonder, what for me is left?
Only grave slabs where the blood has faded
Or a crumbling doorway’s bricked up cleft,
Or an echo that cannot but tarry
Even though I plead with it to stop…
Like the one that in my heart I carry
It’s an echo I can never drop.
В прошлое давно пути закрыты,
И на что мне прошлое теперь?
Что там?- окровавленные плиты
Или замурованная дверь,
Или эхо, что еще не может
Замолчать, хотя я так прошу…
С этим эхом приключилось то же,
Что и с тем, что в сердце я ношу.
Modigliani’s sketch of Anna Akhmatova. (The original still hangs in her room at the Fountain House in St Petersburg.)
A poem from 1916.
So since the dawn I’ve nothing said
Of song sung by my dream.
One fate there is for rose of red
And me and flitting beam.
The snows drift from the sloping hills,
And whiter I’m than snow,
But sweetly of creeks’ muddy spills
The banks are dreaming so,
And spruce grove’s sparkling whisper’s sound
Than dawning thought is calmer found.
Бывало, я с утра молчу,
О том, что сон мне пел.
Румяной розе и лучу,
И мне – один удел.
С покатых гор ползут снега,
А я белей, чем снег,
Но сладко снятся берега
Разливных мутных рек,
Еловой рощи свежий шум
Покойнее рассветных дум.
Akhmatova with Nikolai Gumilev and their son Lev, 1916
This doesn’t ring true. It’s too formulaic, too Soviet. And that’s the point. Akhmatova wrote this in May 1950. Her son Lev had been sentenced to 10 years in a Siberian prison camp in 1949, and Akhmatova began to write such poems in an effort to secure his release. Lev was released in 1956, when the thaw under Khrushchev began.
Five years have passed – and now the wounds inflicted
By cruel war have just begun to heal.
And now my Russia’s ……….fields unconstricted
Succumb again to quiet’s frigid feel.
Through darkness of the seaside night the beacons
Directing sailor on his journey blaze.
And at their fire, as if it friendly beckons,
The sailors out to sea now cast their gaze.
Where tank once thundered, now the tractors grumble,
Where all was fire is filled with garden’s scent,
And on the path that once was churned to crumble
The cars now float with journey’s light intent.
And where the spruce, ’midst branches’ mad derangement,
Cried out for vengeance, now the spruce grows green,
And where the heart once ached from sad estrangement,
A cradle-rocking mother singing’s seen.
Again you are a free and mighty nation,
O Russia mine! ……….For ever, though, we’ll store
In people’s treasured memories fond libation
Fermented in the burning years of war.
So for the peace of future generations
From Caspian Sea until the polar ice
As if burnt villages’ commemorations
The skylines of new cities now arise.
Oh, one will take a direct path,
Another will meander
And hanker for his father’s hearth
Where once he met philander.
But trouble follows all my trails,
Not straight, nor circles treading,
Like engines going off the rails
To nowhere, never, heading.
Один идет прямым путем,
Другой идет по кругу
И ждет возврата в отчий дом,
Ждет прежнюю подругу.
А я иду – за мной беда,
Не прямо и не косо,
А в никуда и в никогда,
Как поезда с откоса.
The evening peal at monastery’s wall
Appears to mirror nature’s benediction…
A pallid face hits faded pool with friction –
As now the grey-winged gloaming starts to fall.
Above the distant meadow white canoes
From alien world now with the shadows skitter…
O faithless hour, the hour of thoughts so bitter
Beneath the rising moonlight’s silver hue.
lingua fennica 