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Requiem
by Anna Akhmatova
A poem about life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s
No, not under the vault of another sky, not under the shelter of other wings.
I was with my people then, there where my people were doomed to be.
Instead of a Forward
During the terrible years of Yezhov's power, I spent seventeen
months standing outside the prison in Leningrad, waiting for news. One day
someone recognized me.
Then a woman with lips blue from the cold, who was standing behind me, and
of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected
us all. She whispered in my ear (for we all spoke in whispers there):
"Can you describe this?"
I said, "I can."
Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.
Dedication
The mountains bend before this grief,
the great river does not flow,
but the prison locks are strong,
and behind them are the convicts' burrows
and a deathly sadness.
For somebody the fresh wind blows,
for someone the sunset basks...
We do not know, we are the same everywhere;
we hear only the repellent clank of keys,
and the heavy steps of the soldiers.
We rose as though to early mass,
and went through the savage capital,
and we used to meet there, more lifeless than the dead,
the sun lower, the Neva mistier,
but in the distance hope still sings.
"Condemned!"... Immediately the tears start,
one woman, already isolated from everyone else,
as though her life had been wrenched from her heart,
as though she had been smashed falt on her back,
still, she walks on... staggers... alone...
Where now are the chance friends
of my two hellish years?
What do they see in the Siberian blizzard,
what comes to them in the moon's circle?
I send them my farewell greeting.
Introduction
It was a time when only the dead
smiled, happy in their peace.
And Leningrad dangled like a useless pendant
at the side of its prisons.
A time when, tortured out of their minds,
the convicted walked in regiments,
and the train whistles sang
their short parting song.
Stars of death stood over us.
Innocent Russia squirmed
under the bloody boots,
under the wheels of the prisoner transport vans.
I
They took you away at dawn,
I walked after you as though you were being borne out,
the children were crying in the dark room,
the candle swam by the icon stand.
The cold of the icon on your lips.
Death sweat on your brow... Do not forget!
I will howl by the Kremlin towers
like the wives of the musketeers killed by Czar Peter.
II
The quiet Don River flows quietly,
the yellow moon goes into the house,
goes in with its cap askew,
the yellow moon sees the shadow.
This woman is sick,
this woman is alone,
husband in the grave, son in prison.
Pray for me.
III
No, this is not me--someone else suffers.
I could not stand this: let black drapes
cover what has happened,
and let them take away the street lights...
Night.
IV
If I could show you, the mocker,
everybody's favorite,
happy sinner of the Czar's vacation village,
how your life will turn out:
you will stand at Crucifixion Prison
three hundredth in the line with your prison parcel.
You will set fire to the New Year ice
with your hot tears.
There the prison poplar sways,
silence--and how many
innocent lives are ending there...
V
For seventeen months I have been screaming,
calling you home.
I flung myself at the executioner's feet.
You are my son and my terror.
Everything is confused forever,
and I can no longer tell beast from man,
and how long I must wait for the execution.
Only the dusty flowers,
the clank of censers, and tracks
leading from somewhere to nowhere.
An enormous star
looks me straight in the eye
and threatens swift destruction.
VI
Weightless weeks fly by,
I will never grasp what happened.
How the white nights looked
at you, my son, in prison,
how they look again
with the burning eye of the hawk,
they speak of your tall cross,
they speak of death.
VII: Verdict
The stone word fell
on my still living breast.
Never mind, I was prepared.
Somehow I will come to terms with it.
Today I have much work to do:
I must finally kill my memory,
I must, so my soul can turn to stone,
I must learn to live again.
Or else... the hot summer rustle,
like holiday time outside my window.
I have felt this coming for a long time,
this bright day and the empty house.
VIII: To Death
You will come anyway--so why not now?
I am waiting for you--it is not very difficult for me.
I have put out the light and opened the door
to you, so simple and wonderful.
Assume any shape you like.
Burst in as a poison gas shell,
or creep up like a burglar with a heavy weight,
or poison me with typhus vapors.
Or come with a denunciation thought up by you
and known ad nauseam to everyone,
so that I may see the blue police lights
and the fear-whitened face of the janitor
watching the arrest.
I don't care now.
The Yenisey River rolls by
and the pole star shines on their concentration camps.
The blue lustre of loving eyes
conceals the final horror.
IX
Already madness has covered
half my soul with its wing.
It gives me strong liquor to drink,
and lures me to the black valley.
I realized that I must
hand victory to my madness,
as I listened to me delirium.
It was already alien to me.
The madness will not let me take
anything away with me
(however I beg it,
however I pester it with prayer):
not the terrible eyes of my son,
the rock-like suffering,
not the day when the storm came,
not the prison visiting hour,
nor the sweet coolness of hands,
nor the uproar of the lime trees' shadows,
nor the distant light, sound--
the comfort of last words.
X: Crucifixion
"Weep not for Me, Mother, in the grave I have life."
The choir of angels glorified the great hour,
the heavens melted in flames.
Jesus said to His Father: "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
Jesus said to His Mother: "Oh, weep not for Me..."
Mary Magalene smote her breast and wept.
The disciple whom Jesus loved turned to stone.
But where his Mother stood in silence
nobody dared even look.
Epilogue
I found out how faces droop,
how terror looks out from under the eyelids,
how suffering carves on cheeks
hard pages of cuneiform,
how curls ash-blonde and black
turn silver overnight,
a smile fades on submissive lips,
fear trembles in a dry laugh.
I pray not for myself alone,
but for everyone who stood with me,
in the cruel cold, in the July heat,
under the blind, red, prison wall.
The hour of remembrance has drawn close again.
I see you, hear you, feel you.
The one they hardly dragged to the window,
the one who no longer treads this earth,
the one who shook her beautiful head,
and said: "Coming to this place is like coming home."
I would like to call them all by name.
But the list was taken away, and I cannot remember.
For them I have woven a wide shroud
from the humble words I heard among them.
I remember them always, everywhere,
I will never forget them, whatever comes.
And if they gag my tormented mouth,
with which one hundred million people cry,
then let them also remember me
on the eve of my remembrance day.
If they ever think of building
a memorial to me in this country,
I solemnly give my consent,
only with this condition: not to build it
near the sea where I was born;
my last tie with the sea is boroken;
nor in Tsarsky Sad by the hallowed stump
where an inconsolable shadow seeks me,
but here, outside the prison, where I stood three hundred hours,
and they never unbolted the door for me.
Build it here because even in blessed death I am terrified
that I will forget--forget the thundering of the prisoner
transport vans,
forget how the hateful door slammed,
forget how the old woman howled like a wounded beast.
Let the melting snow stream
like tears from my motionless, bronze eyelids,
let the prison dove call in the distance,
and the boats go quietly on the Neva.
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Professor of Economics J. Bradford DeLong, 689 Evans
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
(510) 643-4027phone (510) 642-6615 fax
delong@econ.berkeley.edu
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