Daily Anna Akhmatova

from “Selected Poems,” translated by D.M. Thomas

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

There is nothing that he needs, / Nothing I can deny.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

And his eyes, glinting dully, / Never slid from my ring; / Never a single muscle / Moved under his snakeskin.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

'Tell me how they kiss you, Tell me how you kiss.'

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

Nothing is different: thin snow beats / Against the dining-room window-pane.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

Already listless, you followed me / Everywhere and always.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

I thought, a cadet's pride / At becoming adult. / I thought, objects of the cult / Aren't loved like brides.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

No, I am looking only at the wall's / Reflections of the dying heavenly fires.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

May my name be in the textbooks / Of children playing in the street.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

So many requests, always, from a lover! / None when they fall out of love. / I'm glad the water does not move / Under the colourless ice of the river.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

Dear mementoes, // Where can I hide you? / And it's a bitter thought / That my little white shoe / will be tried by everyone.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

There was a pining in my heart / I could not recognize.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

How impossible is grief, how vain the waiting!

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

Have my clothes to wear, / Answer my fears with silence, / Let the wind blow

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

—You've come to put me in the grave. / Where is your shovel and your spade? / You're carrying just a flute. / I'm not going to blame you, / Sadly a long time ago / My voice fell mute.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

Don't hear it when the women strike / The tambourine; yet you fear the silence.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

No sin in him. I was his fee. / He went, and arranged other limbs, / And other draperies. Void of dreams, / I lie in mortal lethargy.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

Sadness is a crime, a prison.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

I've got drunk / On your voice in the doorway. / I was sure you'd come back.

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

It's all the same where to be bored!

[Daily Anna Akhmatova @DailyAkhmatova]

I'll never understand it, are you close / To me, or did you simply love me?