Two by Akhmatova

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

We're All Drunkards Here

We're all drunkards here, and harlots:
how wretched we are together!
On the walls, flowers and birds
wait for the clouds to gather.

You puff on your burnished pipe,
strange shapes above you swim,
I have put on a narrow skirt
to show my lines are trim.
The windows are tightly sealed.
What brews? Thunder or sleet?
How well I know your look,
your eyes like a cautious cat.

O heavy heart, how long
before the tolling bell?
But that one dancing there
will surely rot in hell!


Epigram

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!


~Anna Akhmatova (tr. Stanley Kunitz and Max Heyward)