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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
REQUIEM, by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: At dawn they came and took you away Alternate Author Name(s): Akhmatova, Anna Subject(s): Russia - Stalin Era | |||
No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place. Instead of a Preface In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there): "Can you describe this?" And I said: "I can." Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face. Dedication Such grief might make the mountains stoop, reverse the waters where they flow, but cannot burst these ponderous bolts that block us from the prison cells crowded with mortal woe. . . . For some the wind can freshly blow, for some the sunlight fade at ease, but we, made partners in our dread, hear but the grating of the keys, and heavy-booted soldiers' tread. As if for early mass, we rose and each day walked the wilderness, trudging through silent street and square, to congregate, less live than dead. The sun declined, the Neva blurred, and hope sang always from afar. Whose sentence is decreed? . . . That moan, that sudden spurt of woman's tears, shows one distinguished from the rest, as if they'd knocked her to the ground and wrenched the heart out of her breast, then let her go, reeling, alone. Where are they now, my nameless friends from those two years I spent in hell? What specters mock them now, amid the fury of Siberian snows, or in the blighted circle of the moon? To them I cry, Hail and Farewell! Prologue That was a time when only the dead could smile, delivered from their wars, and the sign, the soul, of Leningrad dangled outside its prison-house; and the regiments of the condemned, herded in the railroad-yards, shrank from the engine's whistle-song whose burden went, "Away, pariahs!" The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias. I At dawn they came and took you away. You were my dead: I walked behind. In the dark room children cried, the holy candle gasped for air. Your lips were chill from the ikon's kiss, sweat bloomed on your brow-those deathly flowers! Like the wives of Peter's troopers in Red Square I'll stand and howl under the Kremlin towers. II Quietly flows the quiet Don; into my house slips the yellow moon. It leaps the sill, with its cap askew, and balks at a shadow, that yellow moon. This woman is sick to her marrow-bone, this woman is utterly alone, with husband dead, with son away in jail. Pray for me. Pray. III Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound. I could never have borne it. So take the thing that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground. Whisk the lamps away . . . Night. IV They should have shown you-mocker, delight of your friends, hearts' thief, naughtiest girl of Pushkin's town- this picture of your fated years, as under the glowering wall you stand, shabby, three hundredth in the line, clutching a parcel in your hand, and the New Year's ice scorched by your tears. See there the prison poplar bending! No sound. No sound. Yet how many innocent lives are ending . . . V For seventeen months I have cried aloud, calling you back to your lair. I hurled myself at the hangman's foot. You are my son, changed into nightmare. Confusion occupies the world, and I am powerless to tell somebody brute from something human, or on what day the word spells, "Kill!" Nothing is left but dusty flowers, the tinkling thurible, and tracks that lead to nowhere. Night of stone, whose bright enormous star stares me straight in the eyes, promising death, ah soon! VI The weeks fly out of mind, I doubt that it occurred: how into your prison, child, the white nights, blazing, stared; and still, as I draw breath, they fix their buzzard eyes on what the high cross shows, this body of your death. VII The Sentence The word dropped like a stone on my still living breast. Confess: I was prepared, am somehow ready for the test. So much to do today: kill memory, kill pain, turn heart into a stone, and yet prepare to live again. Not quite. Hot summer's feast brings rumors of carouse. How long have I foreseen this brilliant day, this empty house? VIII To Death You will come in any case-so why not now? How long I wait and wait. The bad times fall. I have put out the light and opened the door for you, because you are simple and magical. Assume, then, any form that suits your wish, take aim, and blast at me with poisoned shot, or strangle me like an efficient mugger, or else infect me-typhus be my lot- or spring out of the fairytale you wrote, the one we're sick of hearing, day and night, where the blue hatband marches up the stairs, led by the janitor, pale with fright. It's all the same to me. The Yenisei swirls the North Star shines, as it will shine forever; and the blue lustre of my loved one's eyes is clouded over by the final horror. IX Already madness lifts its wing to cover half my soul. That taste of opiate wine! Lure of the dark valley! Now everything is clear. I admit my defeat. The tongue of my ravings in my ear is the tongue of a stranger. No use to fall down on my knees and beg for mercy's sake. Nothing I counted mine, out of my life, is mine to take: not my son's terrible eyes, not the elaborate stone flower of grief, not the day of the storm, not the trial of the visiting hour, not the dear coolness of his hands, not the lime trees' agitated shade, not the thin cricket-sound of consolation's parting word. X Crucifixion "Do not weep for me, Mother, when I am in my grave." I A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me. . . ." II Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared. His mother stood apart. No other looked into her secret eyes. No one dared. Epilogue I I have learned how faces fall to bone, how under the eyelids terror lurks how suffering inscribes on cheeks the hard lines of its cuneiform texts, how glossy black or ash-fair locks turn overnight to tarnished silver, how smiles fade on submissive lips, and fear quavers in a dry titter. And I pray not for myself alone . . . for all who stood outside the jail, in bitter cold or summer's blaze, with me under that blind red wall. II Remembrance hour returns with the turning year. I see, I hear, I touch you drawing near: the one we tried to help to the sentry's booth, and who no longer walks this precious earth, and that one who would toss her pretty mane and say, "It's just like coming home again." I want to name the names of all that host, but they snatched up the list, and now it's lost. I've woven them a garment that's prepared out of poor words, those that I overheard, and will hold fast to every word and glance all of my days, even in new mischance, and if a gag should blind my tortured mouth, through which a hundred million people shout, then let them pray for me, as I do pray for them, this eve of my remembrance day. And if my country ever should assent to casting in my name a monument, I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed not near the seas on which my eyes first opened- my last link with the sea has long been broken- nor in the Tsar's garden near the sacred stump, where a grieved shadow hunts my body's warmth, but here, here I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars. Because even in blissful death I fear to lose the clangor of the Black Marias, to lose the banging of that odious gate and the old crone howling like a wounded beast. And from my motionless bronze-lidded sockets may the melting snow, like teardrops, slowly trickle, and a prison dove coo somewhere, over and over, as the ships sail softly down the flowing Neva. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BLIND HORSES by ROBINSON JEFFERS REQUIEM: 1935-1940 by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO REQUIEM: 2 by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO REQUIEM: 3 by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO REQUIEM: 4 by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO REQUIEM: 5 by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO REQUIEM: 6 by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO REQUIEM: 7. THE SENTENCE by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO REQUIEM: 8. TO DEATH by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO CONFESSION (1) by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO COURAGE by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO I SAID TO THE CUCKOO: 'TILL I DIE' by ANNA ADREYEVNA GORENKO |
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