I loved you – and maybe love
still smoulders in my heart;
but let my love not trouble
you or cause you any hurt.
I loved you but stayed silent,
timid, despairing, jealous;
I loved you truly – God grant
you such love from someone else.
by Александр Сергеевич Пушкин (Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin)
a.k.a. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
(1829)
translated by Robert Chandler
Whispers, timid breathing,
trills of a nightingale,
the silver and the shiver
of a sleepy rill.
Pale light and nighttime shadows,
shadows without end,
all the magic transformations
of eyes and lips and brows.
In smoky clouds, a rose’s purple,
the shine of amber beads,
and the kisses, and the tears,
and the dawn, the dawn!
by Афанасий Афанасьевич Фет (Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet)
a.k.a. Шеншин (Shenshin)
(1850)
translated by Boris Dralyuk
for Osip Mandelstam
All the town’s gripped in an icy fist.
Trees and walls and snow are set in glass.
I pick my timid way across the crystal.
Unsteadily the painted sledges pass.
Flocks of crows above St Peter’s, wheeling.
The dome amongst the poplars, green and pale in
subdued and dusty winter sunlight, and
echoes of ancient battles that come stealing
out across the proud, victorious land.
All of a sudden, overhead, the poplars
rattle, like glasses ringing in a toast,
as if a thousand guests were raising tumblers
to celebrate the marriage of their host.
But in the exiled poet’s hideaway
the muse and terror fight their endless fight
throughout the night.
So dark a night will never see the day.
by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1936)
from Тростник (Reed) / Из шести книг (From the Sixth Book)
translation by Peter Oram
A different translation of the Воронеж (Voronzh) poem. The alternative on this site is translated by D. M Thomas and is also titled Воронеж (Voronzh).
The poet Osip Mandelstam who was living in the city of Voronezh when Akhmatova visited him in February 1936. Peter the Great built a flotilla here and the Field of Kulikovo, where the Tartars were defeated in 1380 isn’t far away.
He who compared himself to the eye of a horse,
Peers, looks, sees, recognizes,
And instantly puddles shine, ice
Pines away, like a melting of diamonds.
Backyards drowse in lilac haze. Branch-
Line platforms, logs, clouds, leaves…
The engine’s whistle, watermelon’s crunch,
A timid hand in a fragrant kid glove. He’s
Ringing, thundering, grinding, up to his breast
In breakers… and suddenly is quiet… This means
He is tiptoeing over pine needles, feaful lest
He should startle space awake from its light sleep.
It means he counts the grains in the empty ears,
And it means he has come back
From another funeral, back to Darya’s
Gorge, the tombstone, cursed and black.
And burns again, the Moscow tedium,
In the distance death’s sleigh-bell rings…
Who has got lost two steps from home,
Where the snow is waist-deep, an end to everything?
Because he compared smoke with Laocoön,
Made songs out of graveyard thistles,
Because he filled the world with a sound no-one
Has heard before, in a new space of mirrored
Verses, he has been rewarded with a form
Of eternal childhood, with the stars’ vigilant love,
The whole earth has been passed down to him,
And he has shared it with everyone.
by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)
(19 January 1936)
from Тростник (Reed) / Из шести книг (From the Sixth Book)
translation by D. M. Thomas
At blazing noon, in Dagestan’s deep valley,
a bullet in my chest, dead still I lay,
as steam yet rose above my wound, I tallied
each drop of blood, as life now now seeped away.
Alone I lay within a sandy hollow,
as jagged ledges teemed there, rising steep,
with sun-scorched peaks above me, burning yellow,
I too was scorched, yet slept a lifeless sleep.
I dreamt of lights upon an evening hour,
a lavish feast held in my native land,
and fair young maidens garlanded with flowers:
their talk of me was merry and off-hand.
But one of them, not joining their free chatter,
sat timidly apart, bemused, alone,
sunk in a dream, her soul by sadness shattered:
God only knows what made her so forlorn;
she dreamed of sand in Dagestan’s deep valley,
a gorge in which a man she knew lay dead,
black steam still rose above the wound’s scorched hollow,
as blood streamed down and cooled like molten lead.
by Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов (Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov)
(1841)
translated by Alexander Levitsky
Rambling At The Bridge Head 