Fifteen Poems of Anna Akhmatova

translated by Graeme Davis

Part two in the series “Selected Poems of the Russian Symbolists: Bryusov, Akhmatova and Mandelstam”

Contents

Contents

Introduction

Song of the Last Meeting

I see the faded flag over the customs house

A Room at Evening

The Prayer

Verses about St Petersburg

When in suicidal depression

How is this century worse than those which went before?

We thought that we were poor

The Memory of the 19th July 1914

May Snow

Comfort

Petrograd 1919

In the Evening

All has been looted, betrayed, sold

July 1914

Introduction – “storm clouds over darkened Russia”

Once, many of the poems of Anna Akhmatova circulated in samizdat form, either printed in secret or copied by hand. Today Russian printed editions are available, along with English translations of many of them, yet access (especially in English translation) is not as easy as would be liked. Surely shekcily and England where she met up with some friends who had left Russia nearly half a century previously.
va prepared though n would have appreciated the opportunities offered by Kindle!

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) is the pen-name of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, with the name Akhmatova adopted both in deference to her father’s wish that the respectable Gorenko name should not be associated with mere poetry and as a tribute to her grandmother Akhmatova, whose distinctively Tatar surname hints at a claimed descent from Genghis Khan. She spent much of her early life between the Black Sea (where her family had a dacha) and Tsarskoye Selo, the Tsar’s village close to St Petersburg.

Her poetic heritage includes a distant relationship with Anna Bunina, Russia’s first woman poet and the aunt off her grandfather. Her inspiration was the Russian tradition including Pushkin, as well as the Symbolist movement brought to Russia by Valery Bryusov. A member of the 1910 “Guild of Poets” she is a leading figure in the Acmeist movement, in effect espousing a branch of Symbolism which is anti-Symbolist. The Acmeists stressed compactness of form and exactness in order to express what they called the “acme” of a subject, borrowing the Greek word for “the best”.  Following the Russian Revolution her opposition to the Soviet system stands in contrast with the support for the new regime offered by Bryusov. Many of her friends and social group emigrated.

This collection represents a selection of her early work concerning the First World War and the Russian revolution. The horror of this “blackest ulcer” dominates her writing. Her first husband Nikolai Gumilev, also a poet, was executed in 1921 by firing squad on the charge of “monarchist conspiracies”, of which he was probably innocent. Many friends were sentenced to internal exile or to the Gulag, while in 1949 her son was sentenced to ten years in the Gulag. At this time an arrest warrant for Akhmatova was prepared though not signed. She spent many years under surveillance, and was accused of poisoning the minds of Soviet youth. Only in her final years was Akhmatova honoured in the USSR.

Akhmatova is remembered as the first major woman poet in Russian. Isaiah Berlin described her as “an unsurrendering human being” and commended her “passive resistance”. The expression of these qualities is in the power of her carefully crafted poems. She speaks out against the horrors of the First World War and the Soviet system, yet remains loyal to her Christian roots and to the values embodied by St Petersburg, city of the emperor Peter. It was her misfortune to live in an age when (as she suggests in “July 1914”) men cast lots for Christ’s garments.

Song of the Last Meeting

My breasts turned cold with helplessness

But my steps were light.

I placed the glove from my left hand

Onto my right.

And it seemed that there were many steps

Though I knew there are only three.

In the maple trees was a whisper of autumn

That said: “Die with me

I have been deceived by a melancholy,

Changeable, evil fate”.

I replied: “My dear, my dear!

I too have been deceived – I’ll die with you…”

This is the song of the last meeting.

I glanced back at the dark house.

Only in the bedroom were candles burning

With an indifferent, yellow flame.

I see the faded flag over the customs house

I see the faded flag over the customs house

And over the city a yellow murk.

And already my heart is beginning to miss a beat

And it’s painful to breathe.

If only I could become once again that little girl by the sea.

If only I could put soft shoes on my naked feet

And plait my hair in a crown

And sin with an excited voice.

If only I could look long at the dusty domes

Of the cathedral in Khersones from the porch

And not know that from happiness and fame

Hearts grow decrepit hopelessly.

A Room at Evening

I am talking now with these words

Which only once are born in the soul.

A bee is buzzing on the white chrysanthemum

And the old sachet gives off such an overpowering fragrance.

And the room where the windows are too narrow

Preserves love and remembers the past.

And above the bedstead is an inscription in French

Announcing: “Seigneur, ayez pitié de nous”.

The sad notations of an old fairy story

You, my soul, do not touch and do not search for…

I look, and on the gleaming Sevres statuette

The glazed cloaks have faded.

The last sun-beam, both yellow and heavy,

Has petrified in the bouquet of bright dahlias

And, as in a dream, I hear the sound of a violin

And the occasional calls from a harpsichord.

The Prayer

Give me bitter years of illness,

Of suffocation, sleeplessness, fever.

Take away my child and my friend,

And my mysterious poetic gift.

Thus I pray during Thy liturgy,

After so many agonising days,

So that the storm-clouds over darkened Russia

Should become white-clouds in the glory of Thy rays.

Verses about St Petersburg

1

Once again St Isaac’s is arrayed

In molten silver.

There grows cold in threatening impatience

The steed of the Great Peter.

The wind, suffocating and severe,

Sweeps soot down from the black chimneys.

Ah! With his new capital

The emperor is dissatisfied.

2

My heart beats evenly, in measure.

What do the long years matter to me!

After all, beneath the arch in Galyemoy Street

Our shadows are forever.

Across the turned down ages

I see, I see you and I

And forever in your hand

My unopened fan.

Because we stood next to each other

At a blessed moment of wonder,

In a moment when over the summer garden

The pink moon was resurrected.

I don’t need the waiting

By the hateful window

And wearisome meetings.

The whole of love has been slaked.

You are free, I am free,

Tomorrow is better than yesterday –

Above the dark waters of the Neva,

Beneath the cold smile

Of the emperor Peter.

When in suicidal depression

When in suicidal depression

The people were awaiting their German guests,

And the austere spirit of Byzantium

Was fleeing the Russian Church,

When the capital on the Neva,

Having forgot its majesty,

Like a drunken whore

Did not know who would take her,

I heard a voice. It was calling consolingly,

It was saying “Come here,

Leave your provincial and sinful land,

Leave Russia forever.

I will wash your hands free of blood-stains,

I will rid your heart of this black shame,

I will cover with a new name

Pain of defeat and insults”.

But indifferent and calmly

I cover my ears with my hands

In order that this ignoble speech

Should not profane my sorrowful soul.

How is this century worse than those which went before?

How is this century worse than those which went before? Could

It be that in the smoke of sorrows and anxieties

It touched the blackest ulcer,

But was unable to cure it?

Still in the west the earth’s sun is shining

And city roofs shine in her rays,

But here the white woman is already marking our houses with crosses

And is summoning the ravens, and the ravens are flying.

We thought that we were poor

We thought that we were poor, that we had nothing at all,

But when we began to lose one thing after another,

So that every day became a day of remembrance,

We began to compose songs

About the great generosity of God

And about our former wealth.

The Memory of the 19th July 1914

We aged by a hundred years, and

It happened at that time in a single hour:

The short summer had already come to an end

The body of the ploughed field was smoking.

Suddenly the quiet road burst into song,

Flew up, making a silver jingling.

Covering my face I prayed to God

To kill me before the first battle.

From my memory, like a burden henceforth superfluous

The shadows of songs and passions disappeared.

The Almighty ordered it, now void,

To become a terrible book of news of the thunderstorm.

May Snow

A translucent shroud lies

Over the fresh turf, and imperceptibly melts.

The cruel, cold spring

Is killing the swollen buds,

And early death is such a terrible sight

That I cannot look at God’s world.

In me is the sorrow which king David

Regally bestowed upon the millennia.

Comfort

You will receive no more news from him

You will not hear of him.

Enveloped in the conflagration of sad Poland,

You will not find his grave.

Let your heart become quiet and calm,

There will be no losses yet:

He is a new warrior of God’s army,

Do not mourn about him now.

And both crying sinfully, and pining sinfully

In the sweet family home.

Think, you can now pray

For your protector.

Petrograd 1919

And we forgot forever,

Prisoners in a wild capital.

Lakes, steppes, towns,

And dawns of the great native land.

In a bloody circle day and night

Cruel fatigue overcomes…

No one wanted to help us

So we stayed at home,

So that, loving our city,

And not winged freedom

We kept for ourselves

Its palaces, fire and water.

Another time draws near,

Already the wind of death chills the heart,

But the holy city of Peter

Will be an involuntary memorial to us.

In the Evening

The strains of music in the garden

Were full of such inexpressible sorrow.

A fresh and pungent smell of the sea

Came from the oysters on a dish of ice.

He said to me “I am a faithful friend”

And touched my dress.

How unlike an embrace

is the touch of those hands.

That’s how one strokes cats or birds,

Thus looks at shapely circus riders.

There is only laughter in his calm eyes

Beneath his light, golden lashes.

And the voice of mournful violins

Sings behind the drifting smoke:

“Give thanks to heaven,

For the first time you are above with your beloved”.

All has been looted, betrayed, sold

All has been looted, betrayed, sold,

Death’s black wing flashed,

All is gnawed by hungry anguish,

Why then does a light shine for us?

By day breathes a scent of cherries,

A mysterious wood near the town;

By night glitters with new constellations

The transparent depths of the July sky.

And the miraculous is coming so near

To the ruined and filthy houses,

Something nobody, nobody has known,

Though we have longed for it from time immemorial.

July 1914

1

There is a smell of burning. For four weeks

The dry peat in the bogs has been on fire.

Even the birds have not sung today,

And the aspen no longer trembles.

The sun has become a sign of God’s disfavour,

Since Easter no rains have sprinkled the fields.

A one-legged passer-by came,

And alone in the courtyard said:

“Terrible times are drawing near. Soon

The earth will be packed with fresh graves.

Expect famine, earthquakes, pestilence

And eclipses of the heavenly bodies.

But the enemy shall not dismember our land

For his own amusement.

The mother of God will spread a white veil

Over our great sorrows”.

2

A sweet smell of juniper

Comes floating from the burning woods.

The soldiers’ wives bend over their children and moan.

The weeping of widows echoes through the village.

Not in vain were prayers offered,

The earth yearned for rain:

With warm, red moisture were sprinkled

The trampled fields.

Low, low is the empty sky

And the voice of the one who prays sounds soft:

“They are wounding Thy most holy body

And casting lots for Thy garments”.