Heading into the dark, though who could tell by our glorious weather down here in paradise, I thought I’d feature one of our darker poets, a Russian poet named Anna
Akhmatova, born Anna Gorenko in Odessa, the Ukraine, in 1889.
I chose Anna Akhmatova for a couple of reasons…besides her wonderfully dark work, the fact that she holds fast to the literary traditions of other countries despite political climate is in fact the embolden essence of Anna Akhmatova.
Reading her work and biography one begins to get a sense of the indomitable spirit of human kind that allows us to somehow withstand the magnitude of loss and the seeming endless regression we humans go through. Thus we can rejoice in Anna Akhmatova’s work, as did her people in her home country, who despite the political repression of the times never once doubted her.
Memory of Sun
by Anna Akhmatova
Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
Grass grows yellower.
Faintly if at all the early snowflakes
Hover, hover.
Water becoming ice is slowing in
The narrow channels.
Nothing at all will happen here again,
Will ever happen.
Against the sky the willow spreads a fan
The silk’s torn off.
Maybe it’s better I did not become
Your wife.
Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
What is it? — Dark?
Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us
In the night.
We invite you to join in: Outside The Lines Writing Group at:
m.diane.writeon@gmail.com
