Anna Akhmatova
Imagination doesn’t fail me...

Imagination doesn’t fail me:
it dutifully pictures you, your gray eyes.
My memory of you’s pitifully vivid,
cruelly true, sharpened by my solitude
here in the city of Tver—
a glorified railway station
on the long route to St. Petersburg
where, at a highly fashionable address,
another woman’s lovely arms hold you,
imprisoned by felicity. My eminent
and widely admired friend,
it all worked out exactly as you wished.

You gave the order, “This has gone on long enough.
Stop loving me. Stop saying you will, just do it!
You know how to kill a thing, don’t you?”

I do. But I’m too much a coward,
and the more I fail and fade
the harder my heart’s love tugs my blood.

And if I really did die, who’d write the lines
to make my unspoken feelings ring
in your ears like the peal of a heavy bell?

Translated by Seraphina Powell