A.Akhmatova, The Midnight Poems - Translation (Rus.) Poem by Lyudmila Purgina

The midnight poems

seven verses

Only a mirror self is dreamt by another mirror,
Silence is guarding another silence...
Heads (* - of coins...)

- -

Instead of dedication

I'm roaming over waves and hiding in wood,
Seeming to appear at the fair enamel...
Perhaps our parting I'll bear good,
But the meeting with you - a question?

Summer 1963

1. The fore-spring elegy


...toi qui m'as consolee.
Gerard de Nerval

Between the pine-trees a blizzard's set down,
But, got drunken without any wine,
There, as Ophelia, throughout all the night
A silence was singing to us.
And he, who was only a reflection to me,
Was betrothed with that silence, perfectly,
And on leaving me, he lavishly remained, at least,
He deathly remained with me, mortally.

10 march 1963
Komarovo

2. The first caution

Look, what's the matter in real for us,
That everything goes to ashes...
How many a chasm I was singing above,
How many a mirror I lived in.
Let me be not a dream, nor a pleasure,
Nor a bliss in any way,
But, perhaps, more often, as it's necessary,
You'll be remembering that:
The boom of the subsiding verses,
And the eye, which is hiding on bottom
That rusted wreath, garland such thorny
In silence, disquieting soul.

6 june 1963


3. At other side of mirror

O quae beatam, Diva,
tenes Cyprum et Memphin...
Hor.

The beauty is so young to be,
But not from our century, thus
We'll never be together - she,
As the third, will never leave us.
You are moving closer to her an arm-chair,
I'm generous to present her the flowers...
What we are doing - we don't know by ourselves,
But every a minute I feel more troubled...
As the creatures, from a prison gone out,
We know something about each other
And awful. Thence we are in the Hell's round,
But, perhaps, that are not we, in fact.

5 july 1963
Komarovo

4. The thirteen lines

At last you said a word, not as the other man,
Who is... that, who is staying on one knee -
But as one, who'd escaped from prison and
Is looking on the sacred birch's leaves
Through a rainbow of the unintentional tears.
And silence bursted into singing you around,
And twilight was enlightened as with sun,
And world for a moment turned to the other one,
And wine has changed its taste that time.
And even I, who had a fate to kill
The divine Word, stopped mere talking
To stiffen in a reverence stockstill
In one attempt to elongate love living...

8-12 august 1963

5. A call

In one sonnet I'll hide you with great care.
O! then you'll call me, troubled all,
But irreparably guilty in your attempt
To get close to me for one a moment...
Your dream - is disappering in radiance,
Where the death - is offerring to silence.

1 july 1963

6. A night visit
All had gone, and no one had returned back

Not on the asphalt, covered with leaves, you'll wait
So long.
In the Vivaldi's Aajio once again
We'll meet, know.
Again the candles will become dim-yellow,
With a dream cursed.
But the bow wouldn't ask, how entered
You my midnight house.
In a mute deadly groan the half-hour quickly
Will pass.
You will read on my palm, dear,
The same puzzle.
And then your trouble prolonged,
Which is your fate,
Will call you from my threshold
Into the icy waves...

10-13 september 1963
Komarovo

7. And the last...

There it was above us, as the star over the sea,
Seeking the nighth mortal wave,
You named it - only the sorrow and grief,
But never called it - a pleasure.
As a swallow it flied highly at day,
And like a smile blossomed on lips,
But at night it with its cold hand
Throttled both. Even in different cities.
And impartial to a glorifying pledge,
Having forgotten all the previous sins,
It leans to the sleepless head-beds
And murmurs its damned poems.

23-25 july 1963


Instead of afterword

And there, where the dreams are made up,
We both had lack of the different ones,
As we saw one single dream, its power
Was such as time, when spring comes once.

1965