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“I am not one those who left the land …” by Anna Akhmatova 🇷🇺 (23 Jun 18895 Mar 1966)
Translated from the Russian by Max Hayward & Stanley Kunitz
I am not one those who left the land
to the mercy of its enemies.
Their flattery leaves me cold,
my songs are not for them to praise.
But I pity the exile’s lot
Like a felon, like a man half-dead,
dark is your path, wanderer;
wormwood infects your foreign bread.
But here, in the murk of conflagration,
where scarcely a friend is left to know,
we, the survivors, do not flinch
from anything, not from a single blow.
Surely the reckoning will be made
after the passing of this cloud.
We are the people without tears,
straighter than you … more proud …