ANNA AKHMATOVA'S CENTURY

All her lovers have left her
to take cover
for the underground
only novel thoughts
of past artistic dreams
seem keep to her alive
wishing to harness bells
of Tchaikovsky's 1812
blaze above her roof
needing repair
empty and damp
from a hundred days
of rain in the summer air
with too few birds on trees
crying gulls,
and swans off the river
hide by a refuge and bees nest
near the cold movie house
of this city's glare
where actors greatness played
in Chekhov's "Three Sisters"
as performance art
there is now a motionless despair
in an unfinished yearning
Anna putting aside the world
for wisdom's discerning
in a trampled demolished time
and all her friends
have gone far away,
all the names of the dead
in exile, revolution and war
has taken their call
in a chorus of Da Rimini
so many souls scattered
and slaughtered from immobility
all shadow days of her century
have left her
the newsstands are empty
except for the Arbat headlines
of crimes against humanity
humiliated with fainting brows
even your son Lev is gone
only the wind gnashes
over the breezes on the Neva
yet on radio Moscow
there is Mozart, con brio
and in words and letters
of her legacy
will slowly do her part.