Bella Akhmadulina

She’s come and stands – in her full eighteen years.
“How old are you?” She answer’d, “I am eighteen…”
The polygon of hands, cheek-bones, and knees.
A proud in angularity quite melted.

All is a wonder in this girl at once:
The brave of thinness, and eyes’ knightly brightness,
And swarthy brow – I knew it in the past:  
A lamp and note – through all nightly darkness.

“I’m”, she repeated, “eighteen years old.
And I’m alone all my dears middle.
And let me be… My poem is my lot!”
And cries – her face isn’t in her white palms hidden.

I like she looks so fierce and so dark,
And is so kind, and craves for her pain’s growth.
I smile. I know my past too was marked
By all the same. And think: “How long ago?” 

She says good-by. She’s in the great alarm: 
Letting no waste of any instant happen,
To be quite timid, knowing not her charm,
And to be sad, not knowing that she’s happy… 


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, February 2, 2004