Anna Akhmatova
The Answer

To V. A. Komarovsky

Oh, what the unconventional words
April’s last days brought to me here.
You knew that in my heart and thoughts,
Is left that Holy Week of fear.

I was not hearing the knells,
Deploring in the azure-river,
But the bronze laugh – for seven days –
Or crying, like the flowing silver.

And, sadly hiding off my face,
Like before fateful separation,
I was in waiting for the pace
Of her, called since ‘Excruciation’.

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver