Poetry Review: “March Elegy” by Anna Akhmatova

This month, MontanaWriter is featuring poems about the month of March. For more March poems, click here.

One of the last days of March means one of the last days to post a poem about March.

Today’s March poem comes from Anna Akhmatova. Since Akhmatova wrote in Russian, this is obviously a translation. As I have written elsewhere here at MontanaWriter (in reference to reading Neruda):

When you are reading a translation of a famous poet or poem, you have to assume that you are missing much that makes that poet great or that poem memorable. How do poetics work in that language you do not know? What subtle and not-so subtle language rhythms and musicality are you missing? What do the exact words evoke and echo in the original language? If you cannot read the poetry in the original language, there are a myriad of things you can never know.

In the same way, when you like a translated poet or poem very much you never know if you are admiring more the poet or the translator. 

In the case of Akhmatova, like with Neruda, it is quite clear that it is the poet and the poem that we admire. We know this for certain because in any translation she shines and her reputation among those who do speak and write in Russian is so great.

It is popular among artists to talk about artistic courage. For those who live in free and open societies, “artistic courage” is really just that: talk. Nothing of an real and ultimate substance is being risked by any artist in our society. There are parts of the world where this is not true. Places where a cartoon or a book can earn you a death sentence or  cause a deadly riot.

Anna Akhmatova risked everything for poetry… and lost almost everything. That is what “artistic courage” truly is.

It is not for her courage alone though that she is celebrated. It is her poetry ultimately that speaks across languages and cultures and years.

For the last poetry posting of March, I can think of no better poem.

Enjoy!

March Elegy
I have enough treasures from the past
to last me longer than I need, or want.
You know as well as I . . . malevolent memory
won’t let go of half of them:
a modest church, with its gold cupola
slightly askew; a harsh chorus
of crows; the whistle of a train;
a birch tree haggard in a field
as if it had just been sprung from jail;
a secret midnight conclave
of monumental Bible-oaks;
and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting out
of somebody’s dreams, slowly foundering.
Winter has already loitered here,
lightly powdering these fields,
casting an impenetrable haze
that fills the world as far as the horizon.
I used to think that after we are gone
there’s nothing, simply nothing at all.
Then who’s that wandering by the porch
again and calling us by name?
Whose face is pressed against the frosted pane?
What hand out there is waving like a branch?
By way of reply, in that cobwebbed corner
a sunstruck tatter dances in the mirror.

Listening with a pencil and my ear, these are the lines I marked:

I used to think that after we are gone
there’s nothing, simply nothing at all.
Then who’s that wandering by the porch
again and calling us by name?

There are really too many good lines in this poem to pick just a few. I think of her poetry the way I think of Russian icons. An icon is a “window” through which we glimpse and experience and participate in the holy. That is exactly what an Akhmatova poem is. That is what every great poem should be.

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Daily Blog, Poetry Reviews Anna Akhmatova, artistic courage, icon, March, Neruda, Pablo Neruda, poems about March, poetry translation, translation