Anna Akhmatova

When they are burying the century,
The mournful psalm doesn�t arise,
She will be ornamented sadly
By nettle�s and thistle�s green mass.
And just undertakers are hurried,
Because their dark business doesn�t wait,
And it is so quiet, so quiet,
That clearly heard is the time�s tread.
And she to the surface comes farther,
A corpse � in a river of flood�
A son won�t cognize his dead mother,
A grandson will take off his sight,
And all heads are drooped in deep sadness,
A pendulum-moon goes by.

Like that, over once perished Paris,
Such silence hangs now in sky.

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, July, 2002