Anna Akhmatova
Confession

The priest absolved me of my sins.
the candles in the stand guttered out,
the room was illumined with a twilight violet
by the oil lamps burning before the icons.

He draped his prayer-shawl over my head
and shoulders to show my sins had been lifted,
that God covered me anew with His protecting grace—
a solemn act which the holy father
was in some haste to be done with.

I felt him trace,
with an absent-minded fingertip,
the sign of the cross on my head, still covered
with the dark and sacred brocade of his stole;
he hurriedly mumbled, “May our Lord and God
forgive you . . .” My heart battered fast,
I felt the same power by which Christ raised
the daughter of Jairus from the dead, with the words,
“Maiden, I say unto thee, arise.”

Translated by Seraphina Powell