Anna Akhmatova
Three Poems

1

It's time!... Oh, to forget Zhukovsky Street,
The white-walled house, the city's roofs and arches,
Its zoo-like din.... Away! Away to meet
The winking mushrooms and the nodding birches
Of Moscow's princely, sparkling, dewy fall,
The skies remote, the leaves and grasses rustling,
And Rogachevsky Highway throbbing still
With youthful Blok's untamed and reckless whistling....

2

Sounding the dark depths of memory,
I find a St. Petersburg night, fluid and shimmery,
A theatre box's velvet-hung gloom
Haunted by smells that are chokingly warm,
Gusts of wind from the gulf, and, just as it was,
Scornful of all the "oh's" and the "ah's",
That arrogant smile, growing no dimmer,
That belonged to Blok, our epoch's tragic tenor.

3

How right he was — the lamp, the Neva,
The chemist's shop, and a mirage:
A man, a monument erected
To mark the advent of our age....
He glimpsed it all again the evening
To Pushkin's house he waved goodbye,
And like a rest he did not merit
Embraced death's wearing agony.

Translated by Irina Zheleznova