A man with no roots is lost
like the darkness in the forest.
Heart, my heart, what red voices cry
centuries of suffering in my flowing hands?
Love lasts as long as there are
two people, however silent the word.
Love, my love, how may I meet your eyes,
how may I meet the eyes that I will close?
Future, my future, on whose arms
will my hands be planted?
Love, my love, be assured your eyes
will live after you like children.
by Dannie Abse
from Early Poems
It’s just how it is, it’s the way of the ages;
years pass away, and friends pass away
and you suddenly realize the world is changing
and the fire of your heart is fading away.
Once the horizon was sharp as a knife,
a clear frontier between different states,
but now low mist hangs over the earth –
and this gentle cloud is the mercy of fate.
Age, I suppose, with its losses and fears,
age that silently saps our strength,
has blurred with the mist of unspilt tears
that clear divide between life and death.
So many you loved are no longer with you,
yet you chat to them as you always did.
You forget they’re no longer among the living;
that clear frontier is now shrouded in mist.
The same sort of woodland, same sort of field –
you probably won’t even notice the day
you chance to wander across the border,
chatting to someone long passed away.
by Мария Сергеевна Петровых (Maria Sergeyevna Petrovykh)
(1957)
translated by Robert Chandler
That’s how I am. I could wish for you someone other,
Better.
I trade in happiness no longer…
Charlatans, pushers at the sales! …
We stayed peacefully in Sochi,
Such nights, there, came to me,
And I kept hearing such bells!
Over Asia were spring mists, and
Tulips were carpeting with brilliance
Several hundreds of miles.
O, what can I do with this cleanness,
This simple untaintable scene? O,
What can I do with these souls!
I could never become a spectator.
I’d push myself, sooner or later,
Through every prohibited gate.
Healer of tender hurts, other women’s
Husbands’ sincerest
Friend, disconsolate
Widow of many. No wonder
I’ve a grey crown, and my sun-burn
Frightens the people I pass.
But – like her – I shall have to part with
My arrogance – like Marina the martyr –
I too must drink of emptiness.
You will come under a black mantle,
With a green and terrible candle,
Screening your face from my sight…
Soon the puzzle will be over:
Whose hand is in the white glove, or
Who sent the guest who calls by night.
by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)
(1942, Tashkent)
from her Седьмая книга (The Seventh Book) era of work but not published at the time
translation by D. M. Thomas
In 1942 Akhmatova was flown out of Leningrad by the authorites on a whim and spent the next 3 years in Tashkent. She became seriously ill with typhus but regarded this period with a mix of joy, delirium and recognition.
Akhmatova in this poem draws a parallel between her circumstances and the fate of fellow poet Marina Tsvetaeva. Tsvetaeva had been an emigre since 1922, returning to Russia only to find out her husband was shot and her daughter arrested. She hung herself in 1941 and it had an immense effect on her peer Akhmatova as evidenced by her poetry.
In a strange house, in a far away land,
her portrait hangs on the wall;
she herself is dying like a beggar woman,
lying on straw, in pain that can’t be told.
But here she looks as she always did look –
she is young, rich and draped
in the luxurious green cloak
in which she was always portrayed.
I gaze at your counternance as if at an icon…
‘Blessed be your name slaughtered Rus!’
I quietly touch your cloak with one hand;
and with that same hand make the sign of the cross.
by Тэффи (Teffi) (1872 – 1952)
a.k.a. Надежда Александровна Лoхвицкая (Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya)
translated by Robert Chandler
For O. A. Glebova-Sudeikina
What do you see on the wall, your eyes screwed up,
When in the sky the sunset’s burning late?
Do you see a seagull on the water’s blue
Cloth, or gardens by the Arno?
Or the great lake of Tsarkoye Selo
Where terror stepped in front of you?
Or the young man who left your captivity, left
You by walking into death like a white knight?
No, I am looking only at the wall’s
Reflections of the dying heavenly fires.
– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1913, June, Slepnyovo)
– from Четки (Rosary, 1914), translation by D. M. Thomas
Rambling At The Bridge Head 
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