January 29...

...the day the clocks froze, or should have.

Poem 6

Like a white stone in a deep well
one memory lies inside me.
I cannot and will not fight against it:
it is joy and it is pain.

It seems to me that anyone who looks
into my eyes will notice it immediately,
becoming sadder and more pensive
than someone listening to a melancholy tale.

I remember how the gods turned people
into things, not killing their consciousness.
And now, to keep these glorious sorrows alive,
you have turned into my memory of you.


[By Anna Akhmatova, translated by Jane Kenyon with Vera Sandomirsky Dunham]