Anna Akhmatova: Day

“Now no one will listen to songs.
The prophesied days have begun.”

Anna Akhmatova

"Now no one will listen to songs..." from Plantain (1921), translated by Richard McKane
Context: Now no one will listen to songs.
The prophesied days have begun.
Latest poem of mine, the world has lost its
wonder,
Don't break my heart, don't ring out.

“Are the last days near, perhaps?
I have forgotten your lessons,
prattlers and false prophets,
but you haven't forgotten me.”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: Are the last days near, perhaps?
I have forgotten your lessons,
prattlers and false prophets,
but you haven't forgotten me.
As the future ripens in the past,
so the past rots in the future —
a terrible festival of dead leaves.

Falseness

“The sand as white
as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.
I cannot say if it is our love,
or the day, that is ending.”

Anna Akhmatova

Departures (1964), translated by Michael Cuanach http://web.archive.org/20041217155724/members.tripod.com/~Cuanach/anna.html

Love , Tree , Sun

“Give me bitter years of sickness,
Suffocation, insomnia, fever,
Take my child and my lover,
And my mysterious gift of song —
This I pray at your liturgy
After so many tormented days,
So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia
Might become a cloud of glorious rays.”

Anna Akhmatova

"Prayer," translated by Judith Hemschemeyer in Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)

Lovers

“We thought: we're poor, we have nothing,
but when we started losing one after the other
so each day became
remembrance day,
we started composing poems
about God's great generosity
and — our former riches.”

Anna Akhmatova

"We thought: we're poor"
We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day -
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.
Translated by Ilya Shambat (2001)
White Flock (1917)

God

“That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.”

Anna Akhmatova

"You will hear thunder and remember me...", translated by D. M. Thomas
That day, in Moscow, a true prophecy,
when for the last time I say goodbye,
soaring to the heavens that I longed to see,
leaving my shadow here in the sky.
"Thunder," translated by A.S.Kline

Time

“For seventeen months I have cried aloud
calling you back to your lair.
I hurled myself at the hangman's foot.
You are my son, changed into nightmare.
Confusion occupies the world,
and I am powerless to tell
somebody brute from something human,
or on what day the word spells, "Kill!"”

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue

World , Change

“That woman I once was,
in a black agate necklace,
I do not wish to meet again
till the Day of Judgement.”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)

“I've woven them a garment that's prepared
out of poor words, those that I overheard, and will hold fast to every word and glance
all of my days, even in new mischance,
and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth,
through which a hundred million people shout,
then let them pray for me, as I do pray
for them, this eve of my remembrance day.”

Anna Akhmatova

I should like to call you all by name,
But they have lost the lists...
I have, woven fore them a great shroud
Out of the poor words I overheard them speak.
I remember them always and everywhere,
And if they shut my tormented mouth,
Through which a hundred million of my people cry,
Let them remember me also...
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Epilogue

People

“For some the wind can fleshly blow,
for some the sunlight fade at ease,
but we, made partners in our dread,
hear but the grating of the keys,
and heavy-booted soldiers' tread.
As if for early mass, we rose
and each day walked the wilderness,
trudging through silent street and square,
to congregate, less live than dead.”

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Dedication

Dead