Dust smells of a sun ray,

Girls breaths, - violets hold,

Freedom clings to the wild honey,

But there’s no smell to gold.

The mignonette smells of water

Apple-tang clings to love,

But we were always taught that

Blood smells only of blood.

So it was no use the governor from Rome

Washing his hands before the howls

Of the wicked mob,

And it was in vain

That the Scottish queen washed the scarlet

Splashes from her narrow palms

In the thane’s gloomy suffocating home.

Anna Akhmatova

(About 1934)