ANNA AKHMATOVA: The Echo

The Echo

(Another version of the translation of this poem can be found here.)
1960
Long ago were paths to the past closed,
And what shall I do with past, at all?
What is there?  Just washed with blood flat stones,
Or the door, immured in a wall.
Or the echo, that all time me worries,
Tho’ I pray it to be silent, hard…
To this echo happened the same story,
That – to one, I bear in my heart. 


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2002