Anna Akhmatova
Garden

Last night iced the garden;
it sparkles, crackles underfoot.
He left, and I know he regrets it,
but there’s really no path back.

The winter sun is pale and dull,
like a little round white window
in the dull pale winter sky—
like a window on the past
with his ghostly plaintive face
pressed against the glass.

The bad things happening here
take away my trust, they feel
like the omens they are.
The footprints he left
last night, when he left,
still show through the frost on the path.

The sinking sun’s dim, dying face,
sheds a slant-wise white good-night
on the winter-mute field.
No more does one hear
the sad harrowing cries
of the last late-migrating cranes.

Translated by Seraphina Powell