Anna Akhmatova
It was in English that I first read Anna Akhmatova’s poetry.
First loved; I Taught Myself To Live Simply – a poem that remains my favourite.
While years have gone by, and I have since listened to readings of Anna’s poetry in my first language and in Russian, I still return to English to read her exquisite verses. Fragile and formidable at the same time. As she was. The silver age’s first lady.
The other night while a round moon hung from the edge of the sky the whole night, I listened to a documentary about her, aired to honour fifty-five years since her death.
Anna’s life was filled with deep personal tragedies. From being forbidden to write poetry at the tender age of 11, to living through two world wars, revolution, the blockade of Leningrad, volatile relationships with men, incarcerations, and executions of family members, and finally the strained relationship with her only child. Her son Lev never felt that there was space for him in his mother’s life. When he was sent to one of Stalin’s notorious labour camps, Lev never believed that his mother, a famous, if controversial poetess, did all she could to help him.
During Lev’s first incarceration, Anna wrote to Stalin who reduced Lev’s sentence to five years, seemingly because Svetlana, Stalin’s daughter, loved Anna’s poems. The second time Lev was sent to the camps, Stalin refused to intervene. Lev did survive the camps, but he never visited his mother again who died longing to see him. After Anna’s death, Lev built her a headstone - a stone wall in the centre of which he placed a single photograph of his mother’s face. Some say it was a symbol of the opening in a prison wall through which Anna passed food and clothing to Lev during his years in the camps. Others maintained that Lev built it to symbolise the heart of stone his mother had for him.
Those whose job it is to search for such things have calculated that Anna spent 17 months standing in the long line of women waiting to pass what they could to keep their loved ones alive. It was during one of those queuing moments that an unnamed woman asked Anna if she could describe what they are living. Anna said that she could. It was how Requiem was born.
I do not believe it possible to write poetry with a heart of stone.
I do believe it possible to not know how to reach your child’s heart. Despite rivers of love flowing inside you.
I more than believe that. I know it.
I Taught Myself To Live Simply
I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life’s decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.
