Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Some of Akhmatova's best-loved poetry was inspired by her experience of standing in line with other women outside a Soviet prison, waiting to see a loved one -- in Akhmatova's case, her son.

Epilogue

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 main
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 overhead,

and will hold fast to every word and glance
all of my days, even in new mischance,

and if a gag should bind 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 sea 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, where 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.

~March 1940

The photo above shows relative lined up outside abu Ghraib. One wonders how many women stand in line outside prisons in Iraq and one wonders how many would stand outside Guantanamo, were it not impossible to do so. Akhmatova speak as eloquently for them as she did for the Black Marias and the howling old crone. Send Amnesty International a few dollars in her memory. Say a prayer for political prisoners everywhere.