by Anna Akhmatova
That starry night I heard
Irretrievable words,
And my head whirled
As if over a flaming abyss.
And destruction howled at the door,
And the black garden echoed like an eagle owl,
And the city, mortally weakened,
Was Troy at that ancient hour.
That hour was unbearably clear
And, it seemed, it reverberated to the point of tears.
The gift you gave me
Was not brought from afar.
It seemed to you idle diversion
On that fiery night.
And it became slow poison
In my enigmatic fate.
And it was the forerunner of all my misfortunes—
Let’s not remember it!..
Still sobbing around the corner is
The meeting that never took place.
From:
Beg Vremeni, (1965)
Copyright ©:
Translated from the Russian by Judith Hemschemeyer
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