Poem

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. 

1921; tr. by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward

 

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 that 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.

 1949: Leningrad; tr. by D. M. Thomas

Anna Akhmatova (1889- 1966) was Russian poet who was known for her personal integrity and courage. She believed her mission in life was to bear witness to the experience of her compatriots. Her husband was executed by the Bolsheviks and she suffered from many of the sorrows of the Russian people during Stalinism. She was finally rehabilitated after the dictator’s death and ended her life a beloved literary figure.

Today I present two poems by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. The first is written was in 1921 in the midst of the drama of the Russian Revolution, the second, at the time when the poet is looking back on her life.

In the first, written at age 32, Anna counters the black despair of the revolution she sees all around her with the miraculous gifts found in the cherry scented summer air and ‘deep transparent skies’ that glitter with new galaxies.

In the second, the poet is now 70 and journeys in time to remember a summer garden. All is unchanged: the boat masts still creak, the statues stand unmoving and the swan is reflected in the water. Regardless of whether one was an enemy or a friend, all now sleep. What is it that illuminates this scene of glowing white nights? Is it love, or detachment?