‘We’re All Drunkards Here…’ by Anna Akhmatova

We’re all drunkards here. Harlots.

Joylessly we’re stuck together.

On the walls, scarlet

Flowers, birds of a feather,

 

Pine for clouds. Your black pipe

Makes strange shapes rise.

I wear my skirt tight

To my slim thighs.

 

Windows tightly shut.

What’s that? Frost? Thunder?

Did you steal your eyes, I wonder,

From a cautious cat?

 

O my heart, how you yearn

For your dying hour…

And that woman dancing there

Will eternally burn.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1 January, 1913)

– from Четки (Rosary, 1914), translation by D. M. Thomas

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Out Of The Sighs by Dylan Thomas

Out of the sighs a little comes,
But not of grief, for I have knocked down that
Before the agony; the spirit grows,
Forgets, and cries;
A little comes, is tasted and found good;
All could not disappoint;
There must, be praised, some certainty,
If not of loving well, then not,
And that is true after perpetual defeat.

After such fighting as the weakest know,
There’s more than dying;
Lose the great pains or stuff the wound,
He’ll ache too long
Through no regret of leaving woman waiting
For her soldier stained with spilt words
That spill such acrid blood.

Were that enough, enough to ease the pain,
Feeling regret when this is wasted
That made me happy in the sun,
And, sleeping, made me dream
How much was happy while it lasted,
Were vagueness enough and the sweet lies plenty,
The hollow words could bear all suffering
And cure me of ills.

Were that enough, bone, blood, and sinew,
The twisted brain, the fair-formed loin,
Groping for matter under the dog’s plate,
Man should be cured of distemper.
For all there is to give I offer:
Crumbs, barn, and halter.

 

by Dylan Thomas

 

‘I Came Here In Idleness…’ by Anna Akhmatova

I came here in idleness.

It’s all the same where to be bored!

A small mill on a low hilltop.

The years can be silent here.

 

Softly the bee swims

Over dry convolvulus.

At the pond I call the mermaid

But the mermaid is dead.

 

The wide pond has grown shallow

And clogged with a rusty slime.

Over the trembling aspen

A light moon shines.

 

I notice everything freshly.

The poplars smell of wetness.

I am silent. Without words

I am ready to become you again, earth.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1911, Tsarskoye Selo)

– from Вечер (Evening, 1912), translation by D. M. Thomas

‘Memory Of Sun Seeps From The Heart…’ by Anna Akhmatova

Memory of sun seeps from the heart.

Grass grows yellower.

Faintly if at all the early snowflakes

Hover, hover.

 

Water becoming ice is slowing in

The narrow channels.

Nothing at all will happen here again,

Will ever happen.

 

Against the sky the willow spreads a fan

The silk’s torn off.

Maybe it’s better I did not become

Your wife.

 

Memory of sun seeps from the heart.

What is it? – Dark?

Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us

In the night.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1911, Kiev)

– from Вечер (Evening, 1912), translation by D. M. Thomas