The Silver Age of Russian Poetry

Main Page Contents / Back to Acmeists: Akhmatova / Symbolists / Futurists

Anna Akhmatova

All as before: against the dining-room windows
Beats the scattered windswept snow,
And I have not changed either,
But a man came to me.

I asked: "What do you want?"
He replied: "To be with you in Hell."
I laughed: "Oh, you'll foredoom
Us both to disaster."

But lifting his dry hand
He lightly touched the flowers:
"Tell me how men kiss you,
Tell me how you kiss men."

And his lusterless eyes
Did not move from my ring.
Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.

Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing.

January 1, 1914

• Translated by Carl R. Proffer.
  From The Silver Age of Russian Culture. Ed. Carl Poffer and Ellendea Proffer. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1975, p.251.

Acmeists: Akhmatova Top of this Page Futurists

Main Page Contents / To Symbolists