I've been translating poems for my thesis as of late.
Here is one of Akhmatova's:
The Guest
All as before: out the kitchen window
Beats the snowstorm’s fine snow,
And I have not become new,
And then a man came to me.
I inquired, “What do you want?”
He said, “To be with you in hell.”
I laughed, “Ah, perhaps you
Prophesy calamity to us both.”
But raising his dry hand,
He slightly touched the flowers,
“Tell me how they kiss you,
Tell me how you kiss.”
And his eyes, dimly staring,
Did not move from my ring.
And not one muscle moved
On his inviolate-evil face.
O, I know: tensely and
Hotly his pleasure is to know
That he needs nothing,
That I have nothing to refuse him.
1 January 1914
Monday, February 1, 2010
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