REQUIEM
(1935-1940)
No, not under an alien firmament,
Nor protected by alien wings—
I was there, in that place, with my people,
Where my people unhappily were.
1961
IN PLACE OF A FOREWORD
In the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina I spent seventeen months in the jailhouse lines in Leningrad. Once, someone “identified” me. A blue-lipped woman standing behind me, whoobviously had never heard my name in her life, came out of the torpor characteristic of us all and asked in my ear (there we all spoke in whispers):
—And can you write about this?
And I said:
—I can.
Then something like a smile spread across what had once been her face.
1 April 1957
Leningrad
[…]
EPILOGUE
[…]
2
The funeral hour is approaching again.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you then:
She who came to the window, reluctant, in pain;
And shewhose first steps fell on foreign terrain;
And she who,with a shake of her beautiful head,
Said: “Here I come, as if homeward instead.”
It seemed right to call them all, each by her name,
But the list has been taken, and nothing remains.
For them I have woven a generous shroud
From those meager few words we heard spoken aloud.
I will always recall them, wherever I go;
I will not forget, even in new times of woe,
And if somehow my tormented mouth is shut,
Though it cries for a hundred million who cannot,
Then let them join in remembering me
On the eve of my funeral anniversary.
And if someday in Russia, my native country,
They plan to erect a memorial to me,
I will give my approval, I’ll bless the event,
But with just one condition: don’t choose to stand it
On the shore of the sea where I was born
(Mylast tie to the sea has long since been torn),
Nor in the tsar’s cherished garden, by the stump of his tree,
Where a tormented shadow kept following me,
But here, where I stood over three hundred hours,
Wherethe door never opened beneath the great towers,
Because in the sweetness of death I’m afraid
To forget the deep rumble the black wagons made,
Forget how the hateful door slammed and released
And an old woman howled like a great wounded beast.
And let the snow melt and flow softly, like tears,
Down my frozen bronze eyelids, unmoved by the years;
Letthe jailhouse doves purr and coo from afar,
And the barges float quietly downthe Neva.
Circa 10 March 1940