Anna Akhmatova
Funeral

I’m scouting locations, looking for one
that might be just right for a grave.
Any thoughts? It should be someplace sunny.
A field in the countryside
would be bright enough,
but the winds blow so cold . . . .
The coast might do, though a rocky beach
can seem pretty dismal at times.

Still, that’s what she would have preferred.
She was always fond of quiet, isolated places—
and the beach does get sun—that’s rather a plus.
Maybe I’ll build a little house
to shelter her here, as if building a home
for us both, for all the years to come—

a house with a little door
between two windows, and, inside, a lamp
like the one you’d light for an icon
in a far corner of the room,
burning red like our home’s dark heart.

You know, in her delirium,
when she was in so much pain,
she thought she already saw
the plains of paradise;
but the monk at her bedside scolded,
“Such presumptuous visions
aren’t meant for sinners!”

Her face went white in her last agony,
she whispered she didn’t care about heaven,
she only wanted to go with me . . . .

And here we are, both of us free,
to be together forever,
with the waves rolling blue at our feet,
by the surf-roaring shore of the sea,
her tomb by the sounding sea.

Translated by Seraphina Powell