Requiem 2 Anna Akhmatova

PROLOGUE 

In those years only the dead smiled,

Glad to be at rest:

And Leningrad city swayed like

A needless appendix to its prisons.

It was then that the railway-yards

Were asylums of the mad;

Short were the locomotives'

Farewell songs.

Stars of death stood

Above us, and innocent Russia

Writhed under bloodstained boots, and

Under the tyres of Black Marias. 

1 

They took you away at daybreak. Half wak-

ing, as though at a wake, I followed.

In the dark chamber children were crying,

In the image-case, candlelight guttered.

At your lips, the chill of an ikon,

A deathly sweat at your brow.

I shall go creep to our wailing wall,

Craw 1 to the Kremlin towers. 

Translated by D.M. Thomas

Requiem 

Anna Akhmatova

Prologue

That was when the ones who smiled

Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

And like a useless appendage, Leningrad

Swung from its prisons.

And when, senseless from torment,

Regiments of convicts marched,

And the short songs of farewell

Were sung by locomotive whistles.

The stars of death stood above us

And innocent Russia writhed

Under bloody boots

And under the tires of the Black Marias. 

I 

They led you away at dawn,

I followed you, like a mourner,

In the dark front room the children were crying,

By the icon shelf the candle was dying.

On your lips was the icon's chill.

The deathly sweat on your brow ... Unforgettable! -

I will be like the wives of the Streltsy,

Howling under the Kremlin towers.

1935

Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer, The Complete Poems of A.A.