Sunday, March 17, 2013

a poem by Anna Akhmatova


Along the hard crust of deep snows

Along the hard crust of deep snows,
To the secret, white house of yours,
So gentle and quiet – we both
Are walking, in silence half-lost.
And sweeter than all songs, sung ever,
Are this dream, becoming the truth,
Entwined twigs’ a-nodding with favor,
The light ring of your silver spurs...


This lyrical love poem is not an ordinary lyrical love poem. Ego's passion and pathology are muted. What stands out here is immanence, the mystery of human substance and spirit folded into time's dream. 

Akhmatova manages to lift this vignette into a different, stranger tonality than one of discrete emotional event. Amorous regard is universalized, spread to us in the warmth and magic of her lines. All lovers walk here in the uncanny space between oblivions of non-being (before birth, after death). Those silver spurs echo far beyond a masculine symbol; they ring the dream as a shared resonance: being here together.     




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