back to Anna Akhmatova

“I don’t know if you’re living or dead …” by Anna Akhmatova 🇷🇺 (23 Jun 1889 – 5 Mar 1966)
Translated from the Russian by Judith Hemschemeyer
I don’t know if you’re living or dead—
Whether to look for you here on earth
Or only in evening meditation,
When we grieve serenely for the dead.
​
Everything is for you: my daily prayer,
And the thrilling fever of the insomniac,
And the blue fire of my eyes,
And my poems, that white flock.
​
No one was more intimate with me,
No one made me suffer so,
Not even the one who consigned me to torment,
Not even the one who caressed and forgot.