Anna Akhmatova
The Poet

You call this work, this breezy life:
Overhearing something
In music, then passing it off
Half-seriously as your own.

Casting someone’s merry scherzo
Into lines of some sort
Swearing it’s your own poor heart
That aches in a bright meadow.

Then eavesdropping on the woods,
On the seemingly mute pine,
While everywhere fog stands
Like a smoke screen.

I take right and left
Without the least pang of guilt:
A little from mischievous life,
All from night’s silence.

Translated by Ann Clark and Zhenya Zafrin