Anna Akhmatova

To sleep in deep sadness,
To wake in love’s madness,
To see how red tulips are!
Some wonderful mightiness
Was entering darkness
For its most sacred altar!
Little yard of a brazier, 
Your fume’s like a razor,
And how your poplar is tall…
And there Shahrezada
Is going from garden…
And such is the old East in all!


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, January, 2002