Memory of sun seeps from the heart.

Grass grows yellower.

Faintly if at all the early snowflakes

Hover, hover.

Water becoming ice is slowing in

The narrow channels.

Nothing at all will happen here again,

Will ever happen.

Against the sky the willow spreads a fan

The silk’s torn off.

Maybe it’s better I did not become

Your wife.

Memory of sun seeps from the heart.

What is it? – Dark?

Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us

In the night.

Anna Akhmatova

(Evening, Kiev, 1911)