Akhmatova’s Rosary was published in March of 1914; Russia entered World War One five months later, in August. As Akhmatova herself would later observe, it was the Great War, not the 1917 revolution, that truly began the twentieth century for Russia. Rosary would be her last letter from a lost world.
the complete book from which these poems are taken may be purchased at Amazon here
This house has the good smell . . .
This house has the good smell
of living flowers and fine old wood;
in the garden, vine vegetables loll,
colorful, on the black earth.
Sometimes the wind still flows cold,
but it’s summer enough that they’ve unwrapped
the burlap from the sensitive plants
in the greenhouse. There’s a little pond too,
the kind of still pond that algae overspreads
with its green and gold brocade.
A little boy tells me, in a scared excited whisper,
that a giant carp lives at the bottom of that pond
with his giant
carp
wife!
Every day you’re anxious all over again . . .
Every day you’re anxious all over again,
every day the sweet, nutty malt smell
of the ripening rye gets stronger.
Go ahead, just stretch out on the ground
beside me, sweetheart, doze for a while.
In the wide-branched oaks, orioles scream;
nothing short of nightfall shuts them up.
Its enough fun for me to watch you sleep,
chase the occasional playful wasp
away from your closed green eyes.
I hear the jingle of a horse’s harness bells
from the road, a faint sound, heavy with memories.
I sing you a lullaby, a little song
about sad partings at eventide;
sleep, don’t wake, don’t cry.
“It just hurts!”
“It just hurts!” —that’s what the boy told me.
I felt sorry for him. He was still just a boy.
A moment ago, he’d been pleased with his life,
he only knew heartache from hearsay;
and now he knows everything
the rest of you learned long ago.
The stars in his eyes have dimmed,
his glance is downward and dull.
I know he can’t cope with the pain
which hurts as keenly as only first love can.
He holds and strokes my hands,
(still helplessly hoping),
as though this could warm them
or me.
The high arching vault . . .
The high arching vault of the Polish Catholic church
is a truer, more vivid blue
than the actual sky;
forgive me, merry boy,
for being your cause of death.
Because of the roses you gathered for me
in the ornamental garden—
because of your stupid letters—
because of the way your confident, healthy face
grew pale and thin—how you couldn’t
look me in the eye—because of the way
you became a living cliché—
I thought, “This is all for show,
he’s pretending to be a grown man.” I thought,
“Boy that he is, how could he fall
for an old tired whore like me
as he would for some virgin girl?”
I was colder to you than the weather,
and winter was coming on.
Not cold enough.
You were already so far gone
that you stalked me implacably,
your grim gaze on me everywhere,
all the time.
It seemed you collected, treasured
each hint of my disinterest. I’m sorry!
Why did you vow so perverse a penance,
such an artful martyrdom?
Death met you halfway. Tell me,
what did you find in the end?
I never guessed that beneath your blue collar
you already wore the noose.
Forgive me, that once you were happy,
that you turned out to be
such a hurt little bird!
It was hard, coming here to your church for farewell,
it’s worse now, heading home.
St. Petersburg’s so close to the pole . . .
St. Petersburg’s so close to the pole
it’s never night from mid-May to mid-July,
the sun doesn’t set, just hesitates
at far rim of visible world,
turning the sky into yellow amber.
Weighty are the days, endless as depression,
pointless as longings;
but now I hear again the deer’s bleat ring out silvery
from the game preserve, announcing it’s not so long
till mating season, till September,
and the coming of the Northern Lights.
It reminds me of when I too believed
things could change, that that snow and cold would come,
when I believed, as the poor and sick believe,
that the holy water in the font’s blue bowl
has the power to bless.
I believed in future sleighs, not realizing
that if they were as little as that in the distance
it meant they’d never reach us.
I believed in things, while the heavy bells chimed,
far off, as if from some holier time.
Portait of Olga Sudeikina
What do you see, what does memory tell you,
that you so absently stare at the wall
in this not-night when the summer sun
hovers on the horizon, a dim and midnight dawn?
Are you thinking of the sea, of a white gull fluttering
like a wind-stirred napkin on a tablecloth of blue?
Perhaps you stroll again in some once-upon-a time
remembered Florentine garden?
Are you walking the shady ways
of Tsarskoe Selo’s vast formal park,
where once you were intercepted,
your leisure interrupted, by a frantic man’s despair?
Do you see him again, kneeling at your feet,
clasping your knees, as captives will?
This one found his freedom, vanishing
as if into a blizzard, in the white
fire of a pistol’s muzzle-flash.
“Actually not. All I see’s a wall,
colored by the light of the sun’s
dull expiring fire.”
I’ve learned the art of living simply . . .
I’ve learned the art of living simply, wisely,
how to look up at the sky and feel grateful to God,
to set out on aimless afternoon strolls
long enough before nightfall so that there’ll be time
to walk off and wear away all my needless worries.
Late summer. The branch stalks of the burdock,
with their spiky purple flowers—big thistly weeds—
have gotten tall. They rustle in the wind
passing through the ravine;
orange-red berry clusters
hang down amid the rowan tree’s leaves;
I write blissful poems, ripened,
sweetened by the season,
about this so brief, so beautiful life.
I get back to the house. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs its winning, unfeigned affection.
I can see, across the lake, the smokestack of the saw mill.
The furnace for the steam engine powering its blades
throws sparks and embers
that glow the smoke
so it looks, as day darkens,
like a turret with a plume of fire.
At long intervals I hear, dividing the silence,
the cry of a stork returning roofwards
to nest for the night.
I’m so deep in these reveries,
I don’t know I’d even hear it
if you knocked.
Everything here’s exactly the same . . .
Everything here’s exactly the same
as it ever was; it won’t get better—
don’t even dream it will.
When yours is a ramshackle house
on a forgotten, barely passable road
where no one goes,
it’s best to lock the shutters
long before nightfall.
The house is quiet—actually, silent,
empty, and not very welcoming.
A single window looks out towards the woods.
They cut the last tenant down from a rope,
cursing his godless deed
and the nuisance of carting him out.
Maybe he was terribly depressed, or maybe
underhandedly happy to call it quits—
dead, anyway—that much is sure.
Death’s the only big winner in the end.
Sometimes his ghost will flicker, nearly visible,
on the faded red velvet of one of the chairs.
Nights, the cuckoo clock makes a merry noise.
It hasn’t much to say, but what it does it repeats
very clearly—and louder, it seems,
the later it gets. Peering through a chink
in the wall I can see out there, past the hill,
some horse thieves have built themselves a campfire.
The smoke from it floats along low to the ground,
a clear sign we’re in for a bit of rain,
as the saying goes, “Fair weather ends
when smoke descends.” I’m not worried that the wet
will drive those thieves to try my house.
I wear a piece of the hanged man’s
dark blue silk rope on my wrist,
which, as any gambler knows,
guarantees luck.
Insomnia
Somewhere cats are plaintively mewing;
I can make out the sound of distant footsteps;
I obsessively rehearse your last words to me—
they make for quite the lullabye!
It’s been three months since I had any decent sleep.
Insomnia’s my everlasting bedfellow,
how well I know its never-changing face!
It’s my pretty best friend,
my guest who never knows when it’s time to leave.
What’s the matter, is my poetry really so bad
I can’t ever sing you to sleep?
Through the window’s white curtains
dawn light streams faintly through the bluish gloom.
It’s somehow oddly comforting
almost as if it promised better news.
Imprisonment’s killing me.
Imprisonment’s killing me. You know it.
I pray to God to just let me die.
I remember everything so vividly it hurts:
the bleak bare landscape of Tver;
a crane perched on a ruined well;
white clouds in the blue like white foam on the sea;
the raspy squeak of a little gate in the field;
the smell of wheat;
the boredom;
the vast pallid landscape,
so dispiritingly huge
it intimidates even the wind,
and dulls it to a whisper;
the disapproving looks from peasant women
with inscrutable sun-tanned faces.
He meant to bring me to my senses . . .
He meant to bring me to my senses:
he couldn’t have taken aim more precisely
if he’d drawn a target “X” in charcoal
on the left side of my chest.
His plan was to expel my unhappiness
by opening a window of wound
through which it could escape
like a bird back into wide night.
Dearest, your hand is steady, your aim
is true; I only suffer for an instant.
My misery will take fright and flight,
hurtle off to find, with hurt urgency,
some safe branch to roost on,
and there begin to sing
so you can stand,
like one whose peace is restored,
composedly, in your home,
open the window to better hear the song,
and say, “I recognize the voice,
but I can’t make out the words,”
and then look away.
It is part of our project to create a library of the greatest poetry by women from every time and land—a “great wall of girls” —a collection so imposing in scope that women’s genius will be visible even from outer space. Literary translation is the primary means for securing this end.
96th of October Editions has already published books by Marina Tsvetaeva (Russian); Mascha Kalèko (German); Renée Vivien (French); Anna Margolin (Yiddish) Rachel Blaustein (Hebrew); and Sappho (Greek). Ancient literature written by women, and attributed to men, will be found in O’Malley’s Woman in Chinese and Faintly’s Hebrew Hussies and Hellcats. Our fully annotated editions of books by Julia Vinograd and Emily Dickinson are important turrets on the “wall.” Akhmatova is a distinguished member of this company.
We are actively interested in publishing new translations: do not hesitate to send us your work.
We accept as a fixed principle that politics have no place in the evaluation of literature: art cannot serve a political or other further purpose, for good art is itself already a purpose—and indeed all the purpose art can effectively accommodate.
Similarly, we resist and refute the assertion that political feminism can fairly be assigned any further purpose than securing the rights of women.
We propose, as a literary magazine, to do our part to render great women audible. This we view as a necessary corollary to political feminism, but neither identical nor subordinate to the latter—just as securing women’s rights is a necessary corollary to securing universal human rights, but neither identical nor subordinate to that latter aim.