Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

"You'll Live, But I'll Not..."
1959

You'll live, but I'll not; perhaps,
The final turn is that.
In the end, the secret plot of fate
Grabs us by the throat.

They shot us in different ways:
Each creature has its lot,
Each has its order, robust, --
But a wolf, well a wolf is always shot.

In freedom, wolves are grown,
But the deal with them is short:
In grass, in ice, in snow, --
A wolf is always shot.

Don't cry, oh, friend, my dear,
If, in the hot or cold,
From tracks of wolves, you'll hear
My desperate recall.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, February, 2001
Edited by Hecate, November 2006

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Here's a poem from Akhmatova's later years. I love how she identifies herself here with the wolves -- the enemies of civilization, the ones who are "always shot." She'd spent so much of her life an enemy of the Soviet state, perhaps it was only natural.