I was deeply moved by the yearrnings of
the Russian poetess. The died man whom she mourns over
is a solitary fighter, who harshly criticizes existing
society. The following is a brief account of her life.
--Hanson

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

"Anna Andreevna Akhmatova used poetry to give voice to
the struggles and deepest yearnings of the Russian
people, for whom she remains the greatest of literary
heroines. She has lately come to symbolize for the
world even beyond Russia the power of art to survive
and transcend the terrors of our century."

Judith Hemschemeyer, A Stranger to Heaven and Earth


Translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward

Read by Stanley Kunitz

Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.

Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.

http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?45442B7C000C0F000C