Anna Akhmatova: Forty-Five Poems Including ‘Requiem’
Reading Hamlet
To the right, wasteland by the cemetery
beyond it the river’s dull blue.
beyond it the river’s dull blue.
You said: ‘Go, get thee, to a nunnery
or get a fool to marry you…’
Though that’s always how Princes speak,
still, I’ve remembered the words.
As an ermine mantle let them stream,
behind him, through endless years.
‘Hands clasped under the dark veil.’
Hands clasped, under the dark veil.
‘Today, why are you so pale?’
– Because I’ve made him drink his fill
of sorrow’s bitter tale.
How could I forget? He staggered,
his mouth twisted with pain…
I ran down not touching the rail,
I ran all the way to the gate.
‘I was joking,’ I cried, breathlessly.
‘If you go away, I am dead.’
Smiling strangely, calmly,
‘Don’t stand in the wind,’ he said.
‘There’s a secret border in human closeness’
There’s a secret border in human closeness,
that love’s being, love’s passion, cannot pass –
though lips are sealed together in sacred silence,
though hearts break in two with love’s distress.
And friendship too is powerless, and years
of sublime flame-filled ecstasy
when the soul itself is free, fights clear,
of the slow languor of sensuality.
Those who try to reach that boundary are mad,
and those who have – are filled with anguish.
Now you know, now you understand,
why my heart won’t beat at your caress.
Lot’s Wife
The just man followed God’s messenger,
vast and bright against the black hill,
but care spoke in the woman’s ear:
‘There’s time, you can look back still,
at Sodom
you were born,
the square where you sang, where you’d spin,
the high windows of your dark home,
where your children’s life entered in.
She looked, and was transfixed by pain,
uncertain whether she could still see,
her body had turned to translucent salt,
her quick feet rooted there, like a tree.
A loss, but who still mourns the breath
of one woman, or laments one wife?
Though my heart never can forget,
how, for one look, she gave up her life.
Note: The reference is to Lot
Epilogue (from Requiem 1940-1943)
I learned to know how faces fall apart,
how fear, beneath the eye-lids, seeks,
how strict the cutting blade, the art
that suffering etches in the cheeks.
How the black, the ash-blond hair,
in an instant turned to silver,
learned how submissive lips fared,
learned terror’s dry racking laughter.
Not only for myself I pray,
but for all who stood there, all,
in bitter cold, or burning July day,
beneath that red, blind prison wall.
The poem “Rekviem” (“Requiem”) is Anna Akhmatova’s best known work. It is a composition that is made up of several shorter poems, all reflecting the anguish of the Russian people during the years of persecution under Joseph Stalin. Akhmatova was hesitant to trust the poem to paper, so consequently, it was memorized by the poet and a few of her trusted friends. It was published in the 1960s, after Stalin’s death. While the poem refers to Stalin’s oppressive rule, it is important to remember that the poem was also written during a time of war. The other poems in this section were written at the bequest of the Soviet government to admonish the German’s siege of Leningrad and their invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin asked for Akhmatova to write poems about the “Siege” in order for them to be shared with the nation via radio broadcast. Akhmatova was evacuated from the city in 1943, by the Soviet army, for her safety.
and about her: http://www.uvm.edu/~sgutman/Akhmatova.htm
