Anna Akhmatova

All in the Moscow is flooded with the verses,
Pierced through with awful spears of the rhymes.
Let we abide with them on different courses,
Let the full silence crowns over us,
Let muteness would be the secret symbol
Of them with you, though always seemed – with me,
But you unite self in a marriage, single, 
With virgin silence, bitterest to be, – 
That one, which eats the granite under ground,
And makes the future circle wholly filled,
And, in the night, suppressing loud sound,
Predicts your perish through your own ear.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2002