By Anna Akhmatova
(January 1914)
I am over at the Poet’s.
It is Sunday. Noon exactly.
In the spacious room it’s silent.
Through the windows frost.
Over smoke, the scruffy, glaucous,
Glowing raspberry, the sunlight…
And the host, so sparsely worded,
Peers so lucidly at me.
And his eyes are so uncanny,
Everybody must recall them,
But I’m guarded; I am better
To avoid them well.
But the chat I will remember,
And that smokey midday, Sunday;
Gray tall house beside the Neva
River’s seaside gates.