by Anna Akhmatova
He who compared himself to the eye of a horse,
He glances sideways, looks, sees, recognizes,
And instantly puddles shine
As melted diamonds, ice pines.
In lilac haze repose backyards,
Station platforms, logs, leaves, clouds.
The whistle of a steam engine, the crunch of watermelon rind,
In a fragrant kid glove, a timid hand.
He rings out, thunders, grates, he beats like the surf
And suddenly grows quiet—it means that he
Is cautiously advancing through the pines,
So as not to disturb the light sleep of space.
And it means that he is counting the grains
From the stripped stalks, it means that he
Has come back to a Daryal gravestone, cursed and black,
After some kind of funeral.
And once more, Moscow weariness burns the throat,
Far off, a deadly little bell is ringing...
Who lost his way two steps from the house,
Up to the waist in snow and no way out?
Because he compared smoke to the Laocoon,
and celebrated cemetery thistles,
Because he filled the world with the new sound
Of his verse reverberating in new space—
He was rewarded with a kind of eternal childhood,
His generosity and keen-sightedness shone,
The whole earth was his inheritance,
And he shared it with everyone.
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