Anna Akhmatova
This heavy, amber day — it wouldn’t end!..

To M. Lozinsky

This heavy, amber day — it wouldn’t end!
Grief is impossible, and waiting won’t suffice!
The deer speaks with a silver voice again
In the menagerie about the northern lights.

I, too, believed that there exists cool snow,
A blue font for the needy and unwell,
And the unsteady sleight that runs below
Under ancient distant ringing of the bells. 

Translated by Andrey Kneller