Our Native Earth
1961
There are not any people in the world --
So simple, lofty, tearless -- like us.
1922
We do not carry it in lockets on the breast,
And do not cry about it in poems,
It does not wake us from the bitter rest,
And does not seem to us like Eden promised.
In our hearts, we never try to treat
This as a subject for the bargain row,
While being ill, unhappy, spent on it,
We even fail to see it or to know.
Yes, this dirt on the feet suits us fairly,
Yes, this crunch on the teeth suits us just,
And we trample it nightly and daily --
This unmixed and non-structural dust.
But we lay into it and become it alone,
And therefore call this earth so freely -- my own.
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By posting weekly the poems of Anna Akhmatova, I'm trying to understand a poet who is difficult for me. I'm trying to understand her through her poems, before I read her autobiography, which I've added to my wish list. There are two ways to understand poets. One is to first read their poetry, and to then read about their lives. The other, the one I less prefer, is to read about their lives and to then read their poetry. Akhmitova is less accessible to me than many other poets; as I've said before, I think she may not translate well.
What I take from this poem is her allegiance to a sense of space. It's something Pagans understand -- allegiance to a piece of ground. "Yet this dirt on the feet suits us fairly, Yet this crunch on the teeth suits us just." I go out into my herb bed, pick parsley eat it, and get dirt on my feet, crunch soil on my teeth because I eat the parsley before washing it. I will, one day, lay into it and become it alone. Ok, I want some of my ashes scattered on the roots of my lilac bushes, too. I'd be happy, in my next life, to smell of lilacs.
How much more was Akhmatova saying? About country, nation, place, native land? How can an English speaker understand precisely what a Russian poetess was saying? Why should it matter so much to me? Does it matter to you? Why?
2 comments:
I haven't read Akhmatova for a while, but I remember that she losst a husband and a son? Help me here in the revolution and that she couldn't get her poems published, or she was in grave danger for having written them.
I have one of her books around here somewhere.
Thank you for reminding me. I do remember some of her passionate poems to her lover...
Off to find the book and read her...
I came to Akhmatova upon the suicide of an immediate family member.
The dirt in her poem you quote here reminds me of Whitman --
"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
You want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
They're both working on an idea of the land responding with hope to ancient grief . . . the idea of something that lasts, of our becoming a part of beauty . . . a beauty we need especially as we realize that our current form is mortal.
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