Anna Akhmatova
I wandered here, without meaning to...

I wandered here, without meaning to.
A girl with nothing to do,
I could just as well not do it here
by the motionless mill
on a sleepy little hillock.
I don’t need to say anything,
not now, maybe not ever.

It’s August, over a wilting morning glory
a bee swims gently through the air.
I salute the rusalka, the naiad of the mill pond—
the souls of girls who drown themselves
because of being jilted, because of cruel husbands,
or on account of unwelcome pregnancies—
girls for whom water seemed to offer
a less cruel solution—these become rusalki,
sometimes playful, sometimes dangerous,
nixies of fertility, strongest in spring—
but it seems the spirit mistress of this particular pond
has passed away.

A rust-colored slime
has overspread her waters, formerly wide,
now shallow and shrunk from a whole summer’s heat.
A moon glitters in the blue
above the yellow, flickering leaves
of the trembling aspen.

I notice everything now,
it all seems somehow new.
The humid wind through the trees
reeks of moisture. I’m silent, a part
of this soundless place, I’m ready
to cease being and return to you, earth,
to let my estranged nature be reabsorbed
into the strangeness of nature.

Translated by Seraphina Powell