Epilogue I from Requiem
~Anna Akhmatova
There I learned how faces fall apart,
How fear looks out from under the eyelids,
How deep are the hieroglyphics
Cut by suffering on people’s cheeks.
There I learned how silver can inherit
The black, the ash-blond, overnight,
The smiles that faded from the poor in spirit,
Terror’s dry coughing sound.
And I pray not only for myself,
But also for al those who stood there
In bitter cold, or in the July heat,
Under that red-blind prison wall.
II
Again the hands of the clock are nearing
The unforgettable hour. I see, hear, touch
All of you: the crippled they had us support
Painfully to the end of the line; the moribund;
And the girl who would shake her beautiful head and
Say: “I come here as if it were home.”
I should like to call you all by name,
But they have lost the lists. . . .
I have woven for them a great shroud
Out of the poor words I overheard them speak.
I remember them always and everywhere,
And if they shut my tormented mouth,
Through which a hundred million of my people cry,
Let them remember me also. . . .
And if ever in this country they should want
To build me a monument
I consent to that honour,
But only on condition that they
Erect it not on the sea-shore where I was born:
My last links there were broken long ago,
But here, where I stood for three hundred hours
And where they never, ever opened the doors for me.
Lest in blessed death I should forget
The grinding screams of the Black Marias,
The hideous clanging gate, the old
Woman wailing like a wounded beast.
And may the melting snow drop like tears
From my motionless bronze eyelids,
And the prison pigeons coo above me
And the ships sail slowly down the Neva.
