Memory and desire

I could not plan a trip to St Petersburg without reading some Anna Akhmatova, whose fame is huge, but whom I had not previously read – mainly because I have a reluctance to read poetry in translation, and need some special stimulus.  So this week and next, two poems, from a volume called You Will Hear Thunder – poems taken from seven collections, but all translated by D M Thomas, himself no inconsiderable poet.  I think of her as a cold war poet, a writer of the age of Solzhenitsyn, but in fact she was rather older than that (1889 – 1966) and sang the sadness of Russia from before the revolution, her first collection being published in 1912.  This rather lovely poem, about memory and seeing is from Rosary, and written in 1913.  This is Anna Akhmatova’s The Voice of Memory.  (The ‘white nights’ are the long, darkless days of late June and early July in St Petersburg – now, indeed).

What do you see on the wall, our eyes screwed up,

When in the sky the sunset’s burning late?

Do you see a seagull on the water’s blue

Cloth, or gardens by the Arno?

Or the great lake of Tsarskoye Selo

Where terror stepped in front of you?

Or the young man who left your captivity, left

You by walking into death like a white night?

No, I am looking only at the wall’s

Reflections of the dying heavenly fires.

Comments

[glo]

I never heard of this Russian poet before. The poem has really an e e cummings twist according to me. It's probably due to the same off the wall point of view, to the quirky associations of facts and locations, and to the mention of death at the end - although it is not properly and strictly death itself here. And yes, I know, you will now think that I have strange ideas, once again!