Translations: The Bestest of the Best, EIGHT: Anna Akhmatova, "Я научилась просто, мудро жить," NOW I'VE LEARNED SIMPLY AND WISELY TO LIVE

                                                                Natan Altman Portrait, 1914

Anna Akhmatova
(1889-1966)

Я научилась просто, мудро жить,
Смотреть на небо и молиться Богу,
И долго перед вечером бродить,
Чтоб утомить ненужную тревогу.
 
Когда шуршат в овраге лопухи
И никнет гроздь рябины желто-красной,
Слагаю я веселые стихи
О жизни тленной, тленной и прекрасной.
 
Я возвращаюсь. Лижет мне ладонь
Пушистый кот, мурлыкает умильней,
И яркий загорается огонь
На башенке озерной лесопильни.
 
Лишь изредка прорезывает тишь
Крик аиста, слетевшего на крышу.
И если в дверь мою ты постучишь,
Мне кажется, я даже не услышу.

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

Now I’ve learned simply and wisely to live,
To look at the sky and to pray unto God,
To wear down the worries and old hurts forgive,
In a wander each evening on a long restless plod.
 
Where burdocks are rustling in woodsy ravines,
And yellow-red berries on rowans droop down,
I compose merry verses in light blues and greens
About life’s evanescent but lovely playground.
 
Licking my palm when I’m back from the walk,
My fluffy-puff cat lets out legions of purrs,
While a light on the tower near the sawmill dry dock
Brightly burns and then fades into faraway blurs.
 
The silence is broken just once and not more
By a stork who alights on the roof with a cry,
And even if you were to knock at my door,
I doubt that I’d notice you had ever come by.

                                                           Translator's Note

A few facts I have gathered from he internet. Akhmatova was 23 years old at the time she wrote this poem, and had been married to her husband Gumilyov for about two years. He was an adventurer, and even this early in the marriage he would leave her for extended periods of time to travel to faraway places, such as Africa. It appears that the marriage had problems almost from the start.

When she wrote the poem she was living in the countryside, at the estate called Slepnyov, belonging apparently to Gumilyov or one of his relatives. Her husband was off on one of his trips. Nature descriptions in the poem would place the time of its writing as late spring or summer, 1912. In the autumn of that same year (Oct. 1, 1912) Akhmatova was to give birth to a son, so, quite likely, she was pregnant at the time of the writing.

The poem was included in the first poetry collection (1912) ever published by Akhmatova, titled "Vecher" ("Evening").