I drink to our ruined house,
to the dolor of my life,
to our loneliness together;
and to you I raise my glass,
to lying lips that have betrayed us,
to dead-cold, pitiless eyes,
and to the hard realities:
that the world is brutal and coarse,
that God in fact has not saved us.
translated by Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward
What a harsh, cruel and so dreadfully enlightened poem. I love the last line – but I don’t.
She wrote it in 1934 during Stalin’s reign and she and her family/friends suffered much during his time. First husband died in Siberia, son was imprisoned several times, same with her friends.