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ANNA AKHMATOVA

from Northern Elegies, # 4

As for memories, they have three parts —
the first is only yesterday
when laughter is still heard, but our cheeks
are wet—this part doesn’t last long.  Already
a different sun is over us; not far
is an empty house, walls are frozen in March and in August humid,
where spiders are dust and chairs are dust and doors,
photographs are transformed
into photographs, and people come to this house as to a cemetery,
and, back at home, they wash their hands, breathing,
not breathing. But the clock ticks, April
becomes April, the sky is sky,
cities change to cities, witnesses die,
there is no neighbor to cry with, no face to spit at.
And the our dead slowly walk from us,
to our dead. Their
return to us would be terrifying.
We find we have forgotten
even the highway number that led to the lonely house,
and, choked with shame or anger, jump in the car and drive to it,
but all (as in our sleep) is different:
neighbors, chairs, walls, and no one sees us — 
we’re foreigners. We got off on the wrong highway exit
and now we stand here
and we realize that we could not contain
this past in our lungs, our hands,
it has become almost as foreign to us
as a deaf neighbor in the next apartment is foreign.
And yes, we would not recognize
our own dead husbands, mothers, wives, children; and those 
whom God separated from us, got on 
splendidly without us — all is for the better…


                                Translated from the Russian by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris



28   The Paris-American

Anna Akhmatova was a Russian modernist poet. A couple of her most celebrated poems include Requiem and Poem Without a Hero.

Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo) and
co-editor of  Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins).
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Katie Farris is the author of BOYSGIRLS  (Marick Press) and  co-translator of Guy Jean's "If I were Born in Prague" (Argos Books). She  teaches at San Diego State Uniersity.
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   Next week's poet:

 Allen Edwin Butt
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