I won’t beg for your love: it’s laid

Safely to rest, let the earth settle …

Don’t expect my jealous letters

Pouring in to plague your bride.

But let me, nevertheless, advise you:

Give her my poems to read in bed,

Give her my portraits to keep – it’s wise to

Be kind like that when newly-wed.

For it’s more needful to such geese

To know that they have won completely

Than to have converse light and sweet or

Honeymoons of remembered bliss …

When you have spent your kopecks worth

Of happiness with your new friend,

And like a taste that sates the mouth

Your soul has recognised the end –

Don’t come crawling like a whelp

Into my bed of loneliness.

I don’t know you. Nor could I help.

I’m not yet cured of happiness.

Anna Akhmatova

(from Rosary 1914)