ANNA AKHMATOVA: "This Twee Eden..."

"This Twee Eden..."

(From the roughs to the tragedy "Prologue, or Dream in Dream")
1946(?)

This twee Eden, where we are not sinners,
We do hate.
And this smell of the malignant lilies,
And the shame that’s not one, yet.
And the grinning Eve sees in dreams, nightly,
How, with a killer in her womb,  
By the arm, so beautiful and mighty,
She is carried through the centuries’ gloom. 


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2002