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          Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
       Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

                      from Requiem

                                X
                        Crucifixion

                                    "Do not weep for Me, Mother,
                                     I am in the grave."

First Line:   A choir of angels sang the praises of that

 

The above poem is number ten in Akhmatova's Requiem, written in response to the Great Terror from 1935-1940. Orchestrated in the Soviet Union by Joesph Stalin, it resulted in millions of people being executed or sent to Gulag labor camps. The first stanza was written at Fountain House in St.Petersburg in 1940, the second in Tashkent in 1943. Requiem was not published in Russia until the late 1980s.

The above translation from Russian is protected by copyright. As such, it can not be printed out or stored in any permanent form without permission of the copyright holder. The entirety of Requiem in translation can be found in;

  • Akhmatova, Anna. The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova. Updated & Expanded Edition. Judith Hemschemeyer, trans. and Roberta Reeder, ed. Boston: Zephyr Press, 1992.

    Another excellent translation by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward can be found in:

  • Curzon, David, ed. The Gospels in Our Image. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995.