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
Caught Off Guard
I
It was bright and stifling, a summer’s day;
his glances, too, were beams
my eyes couldn’t meet. And, warm as it was,
I shivered, thinking “This man could tame me . . .”
He leaned in, as if he meant to say something
not everyone needed to hear. I went white,
felt faint. Once again I was ready
to set up love like a headstone
on the grave of my former life.
II
You don’t love me. You don’t even look at me,
and you’re so handsome, you bastard.
I can’t seem to fly from this,
though from childhood I never wanted for wings—
no one caught this bird. And now—
my eyes mist over, people and things
blur together, all I can really see’s
the tulip,
the little red tulip you pinned to your lapel.
III
As the most rudimentary politeness requires,
he approached me, smiled, his lips grazed my hand
in a kiss undistinguished
by any particular affectionate pressure.
I seemed for an instant to see again
old, forgotten faces, to briefly meet
their enigmantic glances;
I relived in an instant all the anxieties,
tears, sleepless nights, that have been mine
in this decade since I discovered love—
all of which I somehow summarized
in a calm and conventional phrase of reply,
with a subtle but unmistakable emphasis.
Wasted. You noticed nothing, passed on.
I felt then in my soul, with new lucidity,
that you meant nothing to me at all.
An Excursion
There was so little room in the carriage,
the feather in my hat grazed the roof;
we had to sit rather close, my glance met his gaze,
my heart was heavy—I don’t even know why.
The evening was windless; my sadness made it feel
claustrophic beneath the low cloudy sky.
The Bois de Boulogne looked as dim and monochrome
as a pen and ink drawing, on the yellowed page
of a lady’s keepsake-album from the last century.
The air from the street smelled of gasoline and lilac,
the silence was becoming tense;
he touched my knee, not by accident this time,
I could tell by the way his hand almost trembled.
One Evening
In the terrace-restaurant garden
the music rang out like an audible pang of regret,
expressing without words a sadness
greater than words could express.
The oysters, on their plate of crushed ice,
gave off a fresh clean sea-reek.
He said he was truly my friend
as he let his had graze my dress;
that touch of his didn’t feel the least bit like a caress.
He petted me, just as one would a dog,
as one strokes a parakeet’s feathered head;
his smile was calm, superior, golden laughter
was in his eyes, under their blond lashes.
He was pleased and at ease, as people are
when they watch lady circus riders perform.
The sighing slides of the violins,
their emotion-soaked vibratos hung in the air
like the stratocumulus of cigarette smoke,
low and blue.
I knew the words that went with that tune,
grotesque as a wedding-day dirge,
“O heaven-blessed day, the very first time
you’re alone with the one you love.”
New Year’s Eve at the Stray Dog Café
In the Stray Dog, a cellar café
on Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Square,
an after-hours club where young artists and poets
celebrate their lack of celebrity—
“Nothing but a bunch of drunks and sluts!”
Yes, that would be us,
happily unhappy together.
To make up for the lack of a view
the walls have been painted
with sad, flat flowers and birds
that make the sky seem even more unreachable.
You’re smoking that black pipe you like;
smoke erupts from its bowl,
your own small strange conflagration.
I’m wearing a black pencil skirt,
to italicize for you how slender I am.
The windows of this cellar are even with the street,
they don’t, were never meant to, open;
soot-gray, opaque, they don’t betray
whether frost or storm waits without.
You’re scanning the crowd tonight
with the calculating eyes of a bird-watching cat.
Oh my heart hurts with yearning.
Like a condemned man, I know what’s coming.
That girl who knows you’re watching her dance
has no idea she’s on her way to hell.
Coming in from the wind and the ice . . .
Coming in from the wind and the ice
I’m pleased to warm myself by the fire;
but while relaxing there, I let down my guard
and someone stole my heart.
The New Year’s holiday’s just begun,
the happy time seems limitless;
the table’s rendered festive by roses
in their vase, on their long, just-cut stems—
they’re still dewy from the hothouse,
and I’m no longer feeling in my chest
that tremor of suspense, subtle as the sound
of a hovering dragonfly’s wings.
It was easy enough to figure out
my thief’s identity—I saw it in his eyes.
It’s just a little dreadful knowing, soon, quite soon,
he’ll make it clear he has no interest in his prize.
When I got home . . .
When I got home, a welcoming committee
didn’t meet me on the steps, lanterns in hand;
I entered the house in late night quiet
and dubious moonlight.
By the greenish light of a single lamp,
my partner gave me a lifeless smile,
“So, Cinderella’s back from the ball,
not seeming or sounding quite like herself.”
The fire had long since died on the hearth.
a cricket trilled its shrill insistent song.
Cinderella indeed! My metaphoric
lost slipper had become, for someone,
a cherished souvenir
that someone, too shy to even meet my gaze,
gave me, figuratively, three pink carnations
O sweet condemning evidence!
Where can I hide you?
My heart’s weighed down by the certainty
that time is quickly running out, that my partner
will understand that a slipper is missing
and that the foot it fits is mine.
As if that would get his pity . . .
As if that would get his pity,
my coward eyes brim tears—
but I can’t control them when I hear
someone say the single, sufficient
syllable of his name.
I go for a walk in the countryside.
Here trees have been felled, their gray trunks stacked
beside the path. Without these,
the wind blows free: fresh, intermittent
gusting springtime breeze.
My exhausted heart hears,
despite how distant he is,
his silence. I solve the non-mystery
of it’s meaning. He’s alive, breathing easily,
so lacking in manners he doesn’t even
act unhappy.
Imagination doesn’t fail me . . .
Imagination doesn’t fail me:
it dutifully pictures you, your gray eyes.
My memory of you’s pitifully vivid,
cruelly true, sharpened by my solitude
here in the city of Tver—
a glorified railway station
on the long route to St, Petersburg
where, at a highly fashionable address,
another woman’s lovely arms hold you,
imprisoned by felicity. My eminent
and widely admired fried,
it all worked out exactly as you wished.
You gave the order, “This has gone on long enough.
Stop loving me. Stop saying you will, just do it!
You know how to kill a thing, don’t you?”
I do. But I’m too much a coward,
and the more I fail and fade
the harder my heart’s love tugs my blood.
And if I really did die, who’d write the lines
to make my unspoken feelings ring
in your ears like the peal of a heavy bell?
Part of a Conversation
I was alone and someone was there
in the shadow of the trees, I guessed a presence
in the rustling of the fallen leaves.
It called out, “What’s he done to you,
that lover of yours, what’s he done to you
in the name of love?
“Your darkened eyes look beady,
the lids seem heavy,
as if black eyeliner was too heavily applied
to herself by a woman
not young enough for the look.
He’s poisoned you with that love of his,
a toxic dose of melancholia,
a slow almost-suffocation of sighs.
“He’s hurt you so deeply and so many times
you’ve lost count. Your heart is deadened, numb
to the instant heat of a next needle sting.
You won’t recover happiness
by struggling like someone buried alive.”
I replied to that liar, “Sly demon,
you couldn’t even guess what decency is!
He’s gentle—and tender—” I protested,
“does everything I ask—adores me—
always will—”
I protested, methinks, too much.
You shouldn’t ever confuse . . .
You shouldn’t ever confuse
what you’re feeling now with actual tenderness—
there’s a still depth to that.
You carefully help me on with my furs,
tugging them snug over shoulder and chest—
useless, like your submissive talk
about how this is your first real love.
Stubborn, hungry, mean need
gleams in your eyes.
We’ll never drink from the same glass . . .
We’ll never drink from the same glass,
not water, not sweet wine;
we’ll never exchange an early morning kiss
or watch, from a single window, how evening arrives.
You breathe the air of day, I come alive by night,
but for both of us this one shared love is life.
My true, my tender friend, you’re always on my mind,
and always I am happy just knowing I’m yours.
I see at times in your gray eyes
how I make you feel uneasy, and I’m well aware
that what’s wrong with me is you.
Prudently we keep our meetings brief, infrequent,
so the threads of our fates don’t get tangled up.
At least I have this: the way your voice
murmurs in certain of my verses,
and knowing it’s my spirit
that animates some of the lines your write,
knowing fire’s there, a fire time can’t cool,
that there at least it blazes unafraid—
if only you knew how truly I thirst
right now for your lips
that never even shared a glass with mine.
I have a certain, special smile . . .
I have a certain, special smile,
you see? A subtle upturn of the lips
one might not even notice. I save it for you.
This skill was Love’s little gift to me,
—and mine to do with as I please.
You’re conceited, you’re not very nice,
and I don’t care. You have other loves?
It’s all the same to me now. I’m headed for the altar
with my gray-eyed fiancé
We allow everything . . .
We allow everything in the one whom we love;
when love’s gone that permission goes with it—
I’m happy, my torrent is frozen today,
that it’s trapped beneath transparent ice.
Here I stand and, God help me! I trust
the bright brittle surface will hold.
Save this poem with the rest of my letters,
so those to come can decide for themselves—
unless of course, in the interest
of making it unmistakably clear to posterity
what a strong, wise man you were,
we need to redact a few gaps
into the splendid record of your days?
So, you found the cup of physical love
too sweet not to drink;
so, love’s net was tough enough to snare you;
so, schoolkids will find my name next to yours
someday in a textbook, so what?
So what if they slyly smile,
the ones old enough to read between the lines,
to grasp the sad narrative?
You didn’t give me love, you didn’t leave me peace,
permit me this one bitter little victory.
We met then for the last time . . .
We met then for the last time
on the Neva’s red granite embankment,
there, where we’d always met.
The river was rising, the city
feared an autumn flood.
He remarked that the summer was over,
Petersburg’s nightless days
would turn back into dayless nights.
And he said this too, that the whole idea
of a woman writing poetry
was ridiculous. I looked up
at the Winter Palace, mint-green
and ice-white, a perpendicular cliff
of baroque too-muchness mirrored in the river,
and across from it the Fortress of Peter and Paul,
a flat brick asterisk of bastions,
island garrison and political prison—
the Russian Bastille facing the Russian Versailles—
I recalled where I was, in all this Petersburg,
which is its own world, like a planet,
with its own atmosphere that has nothing to do
with earthlings such as us—I felt that,
and I felt that just to be there
was a godsend, a little miracle.
That hour vouchsafed me a new awareness
and this last mad anthem
of our twisted, finished, love.
Hello!
Hello! I suppose you noticed
the rustling of my dress to the left of your desk.
I’m afraid I’m interrupting,
pausing your pen in mid sentence?
Evidently not, you keep on writing
as though no one were were here.
Well, I came to you, because—
you don’t plan to speak so hurtfully
do you, now, as you did the last time? You say
you won’t even look at my tears,
how I wring my hands, my hands . . .
It’s such a bright, uncluttered place,
your study. If you send me away
there’s no place left I can go,
except beneath a bridge’s dark arch,
where the dank stench of Neva half chokes one,
where its dirty, freezing waters will finish the job.