The Twenty-First. Night. Monday.

Anna Akhmatova


The Twenty-First. Night. Monday.
The outline of the capital in gloom.
It was just someone with nothing to do
who invented the story of love.

And either from laziness or from boredom
Everyone believed, and that’s how they live:
Waiting for rendezvous, fearing separation
And singing songs of love.

But the secret is revealed to some,
And silence settles upon them...
I stumbled upon this accidentally
And from then on have been in pain.

January, 1917, Petersburg.
[English Translation from the Russian c/r skij's 13, 2005]

Here's the standard translation of the poem, which is pretty inadequate. The inclusion of the phrase "good-for-nothing" is, of course, ludicrous. And what's up with the clutter of useless lines like "-who knows why-"? Jesus Christ. Who knows why indeed. The last line - "and now it seems I'm sick all the time." - causes me physical pain (though the Russian больна is very tricky to translate fluh fluh).

The Russian version is here на всякий случай.