‘I Won’t Beg For Your Love…’ by Anna Akhmatova

I won’t beg for you love: it’s laid

Safely to rest, let the earth settle…

Don’t expect my jealous letters

Pouring in to plague your bride.

But let me, nevertheless, advise you:

Give her my poems to read in bed,

Give her my portraits to keep – it’s wise to

Be kind like that when newly-wed.

For it’s more needful to such geese

To know that they have won completely

Than to have converse light and sweet or

Honeymoons of remembered bliss…

When you have spent your kopeck’s worth

Of happiness with your new friend,

And like a taste that sates the mouth

Your soul has recognized the end –

Don’t come crawling like a whelp

Into my bed of lonliness.

I don’t know you. Nor could I help.

I’m not yet cured of happiness.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1914)

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

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‘Blue Heaven, But The High…’ by Anna Akhmatova

Blue heaven, but the high

Catholic domes are more blue.

Forgive me, happy boy,

The death I brought you.

 

For the roses from the stall,

For the foolish letters you sent,

That your dark and impudent

Face grew pale.

 

I thought, a cadet’s pride

At becoming adult.

I thought, objects of the cult

Aren’t loved like brides.

 

But it happens to be real.

Into the freezing days,

Already listless, you follow me

Everywhere and always.

 

As though you wanted to see

Court-evidence

I didn’t love you. Forgive me!

Vowed yourself to martyrdom.

 

And death held out his hand to you…

But why? Why did ou take it?

I didn’t know how frail the naked

Throat under the high blue

 

Collar. Happy boy… tortured

Owlet… Forgive me.

I find it hard today

To leave the church.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1913, November)

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