Not under foreign skies Nor under foreign wings protected - I shared all this with my own people There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
AD OF A
During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror,
Ispent seventeen months waiting in prison queues
Leningrad.
One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never inher life heard my name.
Jolted out of the torporcharacteristic of all of us, she said into my ear(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describethis?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then thatsomething like a smile slid across what had previouslybeen just a face.[The 1st of April in the year 1957.
Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly
Shutting off the convict
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same,
To the scrape and turn of hateful
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict.
Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?
What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard?
What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon?
I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.[March
ON
DE]It happened like this when only the
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles
Short songs of
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -Stars of death stood over
As innocent Russia
Under the blood-spattered boots and
Of the black marias.
You were taken away at dawn.
I followed you As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a
On your brow - I will never forget this;
I will
To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.[1935.
Autumn.
Silent flows the river DonA yellow moon looks quietly
Swanking about, with cap
It sees through the window a shadow of
Gravely ill, all
The moon sees a woman lying at
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead Say a prayer for her instead.
It isn't me, someone else is suffering.
I couldn't.
Not like this.
Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.
Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2)If only you could have
What life would do with you -That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth inline,
Burning the new year's
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar
With not a sound - how many innocent Blameless lives are being taken away. .
For seventeen months I have been screaming,
Calling you home.
I've thrown myself at the feet of
For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever -I can no longer
Who is an animal, who a person, and how
The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers,
The chinking of the thurible,
Tracks from somewhere into
And, staring me in the
And threatening me with swift annihilation,
An enormous
Weeks fly lightly by.
Even so,
I cannot understand what has arisen,
How, my son, into your
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the
Is again of death.[1939.
HE
The word landed with a stony
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind,
I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.
I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to
Then teach myself to live again. . .
But how.
The hot summer
Like a carnival outside my window;
I have long had this
Of a bright day and a deserted house.[22 June 1939.
Summer.
Fontannyi Dom
TO
You will come anyway - so why not now?
I wait for you; things have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the
For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish.
Burst in Like a shell of noxious gas.
Creep up on me Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation,
Or, with a simple tale prepared by you(And known by all to the point of nausea), take me Before the commander of the blue caps and let meglimpse The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore.
The river Yenisey Swirls on.
The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved
Close over and cover the final horror.[19 August 1939.
Fontannyi
Madness with its
Has covered half my
It feeds me fiery
And lures me into the abyss.
That's when I understood While listening to my alien
That I must hand the
To it.
However much I
However much I
It will not let me
One single thing away:
Not my son's frightening eyes -A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting
Or days that end in
Nor the sweet coolness of a
The anxious shade of lime
Nor the light distant
Of final comforting words.[14 May 1940.
Fontannyi
Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour,
The heavens melted into flames.
To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!'But to his mother, 'Weep not for me. . .'[1940.
Fontannyi Dom]2.
Magdalena smote herself and wept,
The favourite disciple turned to stone,
But there, where the mother stood silent,
Not one person dared to look.[1943.
E1.
I have learned how faces fall,
How terror can escape from lowered eyes,
How suffering can etch cruel pages Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks.
I know how dark or ash-blond strands of
Can suddenly turn white.
I've learned to
The fading smiles upon submissive lips,
The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh.
That's why I pray not for
But all of you who stood there with
Through fiercest cold and scorching July
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you,
I hear you,
I feel you:
The one who resisted the long drag to the open window;
The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiarsoil beneath her feet;
The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied,'I arrive here as if I've come home!'I'd like to name you all by name, but the
Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So,
I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humblewordsI overheard you use.
Everywhere, forever and always,
I will never forget one single thing.
Even in newgrief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented
Through which one hundred million people scream;
That's how I wish them to remember me when I am
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this
But only on this condition - do not build
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old
Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like
From my immovable bronze
And let the prison dove coo in the
While ships sail quietly down the Neva[March 1940.
Fontannyi
S1 An elite guard which rose up in rebellion against Peter the Great in 1698.
Most were either executed or exiled.2 The imperial summer residence outside St Petersburg where Ahmatova spent her early years.3 A prison complex in central Leningrad near the Finland Station, called The Crosses because of the shape of two of the buildings.4 The Leningrad house in which Ahmatova lived.
