Anna Akhmatova
Thirteen Lines

From the cycle POEMS OF MIDNIGHT

You spoke at last...
No wooer on bended knees
Those words, those fateful words would thus have spoken...
You said them like a captive who has broken
His chains, and fled, and through the blur of tears
A virgin grove of nodding birches sees.
The silence sang and hummed; the sun's pure blaze
Cut through the shadows, and the darkness banished;
The wine's flat taste had changed; the present vanished;
A world transformed by magic met your gaze.
And I who was to be a murderess,
I, cruelly doomed that fragile dream to shatter,
Sought to prolong it and refused to utter
The brutal words that would destroy such bliss.

Translated by Irina Zheleznova