Réquiem

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 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.
— Leningrad, 1 April 1957


Such grief might make the mountain 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 fleshly 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.

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!

-Anna Akhmatova

The Caravan

In the desert
it is cold
and a great mass of sound hits
you like an angry fist to the
stomach.
Again.
Again.
Jarring bones.
Shaking stone, it
is the tread of heavy beasts.
Their dim shapes like mountains at evening
capped with mahouts robed in dirty snow.

Amid those grey columns of heavy sound
flits the silver jingling of bells.
Laughter climbs their sides
festooned as they are with creakings and chortlings.

Again.
Again.
Jarring bones.
Rasing dust.

The caravan and its sounds pass you by.
You, who are
alone
in the desert.