“After Anna Akhmatova" by Cynthia Zarin

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 2, 2017   After Anna Akhmatova   Cynthia Zarin

As the future ripens in the past... a terrible festival of dead leaves   —Anna Akhmatova   The trees talk quietly among themselves the thrush sings its brown song brushed with blue the roses from the bodega open in the vase   and under the streetlight the long shadows tarnishing the day as we know it—if I ask for a stone you give me a stone,    if I ask for water I do not get water, everything I love weighted and found wanting, as if the world knew how to give   answers to questions. In the long generous shadow of history, I wake and wonder how long it can go on, my lips touching   your ear, asking, what are you thinking— while in the capital the lion stalks his cage and on the veld the scorched banyans bend   under their fruit, the camps charred, no one to pick it. A long time ago, after months when death came so quickly to us it was   as if we had written an invitation, crows settled in the ghost trees. There is my mother, you said, and my father. It goes on.            Copyright © 2017 Cynthia Zarin. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "As so many of us are, I've been thinking about the current predicament in which we find ourselves. How to respond? I thought of Anna Akhmatova's poem 'Requiem,' and the story of the woman who whispered to her, as she waited in the prison-visitors line, in Leningrad, 'Can you describe this?' The poem is an homage." —Cynthia Zarin   Cynthia Zarin is the author of Orbit (Knopf, 2017). She lives in New York City and teaches at Yale University.   Poetry by Zarin   Orbit (Knopf, 2017) "Daytime Begins with a Line by Anna Akhmatova" by Yusef Komunyakaa "In Memory of M. B." by Anna Akhmatova "Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks" by Jane Kenyon Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038