She had already kissed Anthony’s dead lips,
she had already wept on her knees before Caesar . . .
And her servants have betrayed her. Darkness falls.
The trumpets of the Roman eagle scream.
And in comes the last man to be ravished by her beauty—
such a tall gallant!—with a shamefaced whisper:
“You must walk before him, as a slave, in the triumph.”
But the slope of her swan’s neck is tranquil as ever.
Tomorrow they’ll put her children in chains. Nothing
remains except to tease this fellow out of mind
and put the black snake, like a parting act of pity,
on her dark breast with indifferent hand.
translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward
20th Century Russian poetry
To Song by Olga Berggolts
Wake as you will, but wake in me,
in the cold, to the voiceless depths of me.
I will not beg for words, but give
me a sign that you are still alive.
Not for long—just a moment of your time.
If not a verse, just a sigh, just a cry.
Just a whisper or just a moan.
Just the muffled clink of your chains.
translated by Daniel Weissbort
Lot’s Wife by Anna Akhmatova
And the just man trailed God’s shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a relentless voice kept harrying his woman:
“It’s not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage bed.”
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for your concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
translated by Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward
Epigram by Anna Akhmatova
Could Beatrice have written like Dante,
or Laura have glorified love’s pain?
I set the style for women’s speech.
God help me shut them up again!
translated by Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward
The Last Toast by Anna Akhmatova
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
from Hope by Boris Pasternak
You intoxicate me!
Let’s spread the greatcoat on the ground.
“We Don’t know How To Say Goodbye. . .” by Anna Akhmatova
We don’t know how to say goodbye:
we wander on, shoulder to shoulder.
Already the sun is going down;
you’re moody, I am your shadow.
Let’s step inside a church and watch
baptisms, marriages, masses for the dead.
Why are we different from the rest?
Outdoors again, each of us turns his head.
Or else let’s sit in the graveyard
on the trampled snow, sighing to each other.
That stick in your hand is tracing mansions
in which we shall always be together.
translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward
The Muse by Anna Akhmatova
All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
as I wait for her whom no one can command.
Whatever I cherish most–youth, freedom, glory–
fades before her who bears the flute in her hand.
And look! she comes. . .she tosses back her veil,
staring me down, serene and pitiless.
“Are you the one,” I ask, “whom Dante heard dictate
the lines of his Inferno?” She answers: “Yes.”
translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward
The Return by Anna Akhmatova
The souls of all my dears have flown to the stars.
Thank God there’s no one left for me to lose–
so I am free to cry. This air is made
for the echoing of songs.
A silver willow by the shore
trails to the bright September waters.
My shadow, risen from the past,
glides silently towards me.
Though the branches here are hung with many lyres,
a place has been reserved for mine, it seems.
And now this shower, struck by sunlight,
brings me good news, my cup of consolation.
translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward
Leonard Durso 