ANNA AKHMATOVA: 5. The Call

5. The Call

(From the "Middle Night Poems")
1963
Which a sonata will you be
Hidden by me in – with a care?
How uneasily, for me
Will call you, utterly unfair   
Because so close and so good
You were for me, tho’ for a moment…
Your dream – dissolving in a solvent,
Where death – just levy to the mute.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, July, 2002