In a Dream
by Anna Akhmatova
The dark and solid separation
I’m carrying equally with you.
Why are you crying? Come
Give me your hand instead--
Promise again
To come in dreams.
You and I
Are like grief and the mountain--
We will not meet
In this world.
But sometimes
Will you send across the stars
A sign?
560 notes
·
View notes
Promise again
To come in dreams.
~•Anna Akhmatova•~
#Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems #photo Philomena Famulok
93 notes
·
View notes
the winds talk to the stars sometimes. that’d be nice. i’d like that.
The Worm King’s Lullaby, Richard Siken | Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson | The Chronology of Water: A Memoir, Lidia Yuknavitch | I Dreamed I Forgot, Leila Chatti | Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, Anaïs Nin | Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka | Eurydice, Margaret Atwood | Sue Zhao | The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket | Ross Gay | Elegy for the Four Chambers of My Brother’s Heart, Steven Espada Dawson | In A Dream, trans. Lenore Mayhew & William Mcnaughton, Anna Akhmatova, | Sue Zhao | Francis Forever, Mitski | The Hurting Kind, Ada Limon
[ID: An assortment of quotes and lyrics from various sources.
1. Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.
2. I once loved you,/ now I don’t know you at all.
3. What lived and died between us - haunts me still.
4. I dreamed I forgot you/ but to dream was remembering. I have words for you/ only, a linguistic fidelity./ Cherish and anguish and fool./ I look for you, I am finding/ out if I am brave. Last/ I saw you, it was the same disruptive season: robins trilling in the young/ flush, trees shivering/ pink all down the street./ I thought the ache/ would ruin me, and maybe it did./ Here I am in the beatific after/ still calling back to you.
5. “You carry away with you a reflection of me, a part of me. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You will always be a part of my life. If I love you, is must be because we have shared at some time the same imaginings, the same madness
6. ship to you (you belong to me, even if I should never see you again) [...] these I know, insofar they do not fall into the
7. was that you love him anywhere,/ even in this land of no memory,/ even in this domain of hunger./ You hold love in your hand, a red seed/ you had forgotten you were holding.
8. We loved, didn’t we? I was devoted to you, like a nail to a bed. A splinter to skin. Sometimes I was soft, though, do you remember?
9. “(...) I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close... I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don't marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else--and I will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”
10. I am sorry. I am grateful./ I just want us to be friends now, forever./ Take this bowl of blackberries from the garden./ The sun has made them warm./ I picked them just for you. I promise/ I will try to stay on my side of the couch.
11. We’re under the same moon and I’m sick/ with that knowing.
12. You and I/ are like grief and the mountain,/ we will not meet/ in this world./ But sometimes/ will you send across the stars/ A sign?
13. If I could have done it all again, I would have loved you better. But I could not have loved you more.
14. And autumn comes when you’re not yet done/ With the summer passing by, but/ I don’t think I could stand to be/ Where you don’t see me.
15. I see the tree above the grave and think, I’m wearing/ my heart on leaves. My heart on leaves./ Love ends. But what if it doesn’t? End ID.]
141 notes
·
View notes
"I have much to do: I must kill my memories down to the last one, I must change my soul into stone, I must learn to live again."
— Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems
Artwork: Nickie Zimov
42 notes
·
View notes
I have much to do: I must kill my memories down to the last one, I must change my soul into stone, I must learn to live again.
Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems; “The Sentence”
0 notes
Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems; “In a dream”
780 notes
·
View notes
— Anna Akhmatova, In a Dream, tr. by Lenore Mayhew & William McNaughton
16K notes
·
View notes