Anna Akhmatova’s
Requiem
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1935-1940
Another translation of Akhmatova’s Requiem
Not
under foreign skies protection
Or
saving wings of alien birth –
I
was then there – with whole my nation –
There,
where my nation, alas! was.
1961
INSTEAD
OF A PREFACE
In
the awful days of the Yezhovschina I passed seventeen
months in the outer waiting line of the prison visitors in Leningrad. Once,
somebody ‘identified’ me there. Then a woman, standing behind me in the line,
which, of course, never heard my name, waked up from the torpor, typical for us
all there, and asked me, whispering into my ear (all spoke only in a whisper
there):
“And
can you describe this?”
And
I answered:
“Yes,
I can.”
Then
the weak similarity of a smile glided over that, what had once been her face.
April
1, 1957; Leningrad
DEDICATION
The
high crags decline before this woe,
The
great river does not flow ahead,
But
they’re strong – the locks of a jail, stone,
And
behind them – the cells, dark and low,
And
the deadly pine is spread.
For
some one, somewhere, a fresh wind blows,
For
some one, somewhere, wakes up a dawn –
We
don’t know, we’re the same here always,
We
just hear the key’s squalls, morose,
And
the sentry’s heavy step alone;
Got
up early, as for Mass by Easter,
Walked
the empty capital along
To create the half-dead peoples’ throng.
The
sun downed, the Neva got mister,
But
our hope sang afar its song.
There’s
a sentence… In a trice tears flow…
Now
separated, cut from us,
As
if they’d pulled out her heart and thrown
Or
pushed down her on a street stone –
But
she goes… Reels… Alone
at once.
Where
are now friends unwilling those,
Those friends of my two years, brute?
What
they see in the Siberian snows,
In
a circle of the moon, exposed?
To
them I send my farewell salute.
PROLOGUE
In
this time, just a dead could half-manage
A weak smile – with the peaceful state glad.
And,
like some heavy, needless appendage,
Mid
its prisons swung gray Leningrad.
And,
when mad from the tortures’ succession,
Marched
the army of those, who’d been doomed,
Sang
the engines the last separation
With
their whistles through smoking gloom,
And
the deathly stars hanged our heads over
And
our Russia writhed under the boots –
With
the blood of the guiltless full-covered –
And
the wheels on Black Maries’ black routes.
1
You
were taken away at dawn’s mildness.
I
convoyed you, as my dead-born child,
Children
cried in the room’s half-grey darkness,
And
the lamp by the icon lost light.
On
your lips dwells the icon kiss’s cold
On
your brow – the cold sweet … Don’t forget!
Like
a wife of the rebel of old
On
the Red Square, I’ll wail without end.
2
The
quiet Don bears quiet flood,
The
crescent enters in a hut.
He
enters with a cap on head,
He
sees a woman like a shade.
This
woman’s absolutely ill,
This
woman’s absolutely single.
Her
man is dead, son – in a jail,
Oh,
pray for me – a poor female!
3
No,
‘tis not I, ‘tis someone’s in a suffer –
I
was ne’er able to endure such pain.
Let
all, that was, be with a black cloth muffled,
And
let the lanterns be got out ... and reign
just Night.
4
You
should have seen, girl with some mocking manner,
Of
all your friends the most beloved pet,
The
whole Tsar Village’s a sinner, gayest ever –
What
should be later to your years sent.
How,
with a parcel, by The Crosses, here,
You
stand in line with the ‘Three Hundredth’ brand
And,
with your hot from bitterness a tear,
Burn through the ice of the New Year, dread.
The
prison’s poplar’s bowing with its brow,
No
sound’s heard – But how many, there,
The
guiltless ones are loosing their lives now…
5
I’ve
cried for seventeen long months,
I’ve
called you for your home,
I
fell at hangmen’ feet – not once,
My
womb and hell you’re from.
All
has been mixed up for all times,
And
now I can’t define
Who
is a beast or man, at last,
And when they’ll kill my son.
There’re
left just flowers under dust,
The
censer’s squall, the traces, cast
Into the empty mar…
And
looks strait into my red eyes
And
threads with death, that’s coming fast,
The immense blazing star.
6
The
light weeks fly faster here,
What
has happened I don’t know,
How,
into your prison, stone,
Did
white nights look, my son, dear?
How
do they stare at you, else,
With
their hot eye of a falcon,
Speak
of the high cross, you hang on,
Of
the slow coming death?
7
THE
SENTENCE
The
word, like a heavy stone,
Fell
on my still living breast.
I
was ready. I didn’t moan.
I
will try to do my best.
I
have much to do my own:
To
forget this endless pain,
Force
this soul to be stone,
Force
this flesh to live again.
Just
if not … The rustle of summer
Feasts
behind my window sell.
Long
before I’ve seen in slumber
This clear day and empty cell.
8
TO
DEATH
You’ll
come in any case – why not right now, therefore?
I
wait for you – my strain is highest.
I
have doused the light and left opened the door
For you, so simple and so wondrous.
Please,
just take any sight, which you prefer to have:
Thrust
in – in the gun shells’ disguises,
Or
crawl in with a knife, as an experienced knave,
Or
poison me with smoking typhus,
Or
quote the fairy tale, grown in the mind of yours
And
known to each man to sickness,
In
which I’d see, at last, the blue of the hats’ tops,
And the house-manager, ‘still fearless’.
It’s
all the same to me. The cold Yenisei lies
In
the dense mist, the Northern Star – in brightness,
And
a blue shine of the beloved eyes
Is covered by the last fear-darkness.
9
Already
madness, with its wing,
Covers
a half of my heart, restless,
Gives
me the flaming wine to drink
And draws into the vale of
blackness.
I
understand that just to it
My
victory has to be given,
Hearing
the ravings of my fit,
Now
fitting to the stranger’s living.
And
nothing of my own past
It’ll
let me take with self from here
(No
matter in what pleas I thrust
Or how often they appear):
Not
awful eyes of my dear son –
The
endless suffering and patience –
Not
that black day when thunder gunned,
Not
that jail’s hour of visitation,
Not
that sweet coolness of his hands,
Not
that lime’s shade in agitation,
Not
that light sound from distant lands –
Words of the final consolations.
10
CRUCIFIXION
Don’t weep for me, Mother,
seeing me in a
grave.
I
The
angels’ choir sang fame for the great hour,
And
skies were melted in the fire’s rave.
He
said to God, “Why did you left me, Father?”
And
to his Mother, “Don’t weep o’er my grave…”
II
Magdalena
writhed and sobbed in torments,
The
best pupil turned into a stone,
But
none dared – even for a moment –
To sight Mother, silent and alone.
EPILOGUE
I
I’ve
known how, at once, shrink back the faces,
How
fear peeps up from under the eyelids,
How
suffering creates the scriptural pages
On
the pale cheeks its cruel reigning midst,
How
the shining raven or fair ringlet
At
once is covered by the silver dust,
And
a smile slackens on the lips, obedient,
And
deathly fear in the dry snicker rustles.
And
not just for myself I pray to Lord,
But
for them all, who stood in that line, hardest,
In
a summer heat and in a winter cold,
Under the wall, so red and so sightless.
II
Again
a memorial hour is near,
I
can now see you and feel you and hear:
And
her, who’d been led to the air in a fit,
And her – who no more touches earth with her feet.
And
her – having tossed with her beautiful head –
She
says, “I come here as to my homestead.”
I
wish all of them with their names to be called;
But
how can I do that? I have not the roll.
The
wide common cover I’ve wov’n for their lot –
>From
many a word, that from them I have caught.
Those
words I’ll remember as long as I live,
I’d
not forget them in a new awe or grief.
And
if will be stopped my long-suffering mouth –
Through
which always shout our people’s a mass –
Let
them pray for me, like for them I had prayed,
Before my remembrance day, quiet and sad.
And
if once, whenever in my native land,
They’d
think of the raising up my monument,
I
give my permission for such good a feast,
But
with one condition – they have to place it
Not
near the sea, where I once have been born –
All
my warm connections with it had been torn,
Not
in the tsar’s garden near that tree-stump, blessed,
Where
I am looked for by the doleful shade,
But
here, where three hundred long hours I stood for
And
where was not opened for me the hard door.
Since
e’en in the blessed death, I shouldn’t forget
The
deafening roar of Black Maries’ black band,
I
shouldn’t forget how flapped that hateful door,
And wailed the old woman, like beast, it before.
And
let from the bronze and unmoving eyelids,
Like
some melting snow flow down the tears,
And
let a jail dove coo in somewhat afar
And
let the mute ships sail along the Neva.