“Broad Gold, the Evening” by Anna Akhmatova

Broad gold, the evening colors glow,

The April air is cool and tender.

You should have come ten years ago,

And yet in welcome I surrender.

Come here, sit closer in our nook,

And turn gay eyes at what my nurses

Might never glimpse: the blue-bound book

That holds my awkward childish verses.

Forgive me that I did not look

Sunward with joy, but dwelt with sorrow,

Forgive me all whom I mistook

For you, oblivious of the morrow.

Translators: Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinski.

ß