Translation of Poem by ANNA AKHMATOVA, "А ты думал — я тоже такая," "So you took me for some sort of wifey lightweight"

Portrait of Akhmatova by Petrov-Vodkin, 1922

Anna Akhmatova
(1889-1966)

А ты думал — я тоже такая,
Что можно забыть меня,
И что брошусь, моля и рыдая,
Под копыта гнедого коня.

Или стану просить у знахарок
В наговорной воде корешок
И пришлю тебе странный подарок —
Мой заветный душистый платок.

Будь же проклят. Ни стоном, ни взглядом
Окаянной души не коснусь,
Но клянусь тебе ангельским садом,
Чудотворной иконой клянусь,
И ночей наших пламенным чадом —
Я к тебе никогда не вернусь.

July, 1921

Tsarskoe Selo

Literal Translation

And you thought I was also like that,

That you could forget me,

And that I’d throw myself, pleading and sobbing,

Under the hoofs of [your] bay steed.

Or I’d begin asking the conjure-women

To find me a buddy in their magical potions,

And I’d send you a strange gift:

My cherished perfumed kerchief.

May you be damned. Neither by moans, nor by a glance

Will I touch your cursed soul.

But I swear to you by the garden of angels,

By a wonder-working icon I swear,

By the fiery vapors of our nights [together]—

That I’ll never come back to you.

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

So you took me for some sort of wifey lightweight;

You’d wend on your own way while I’d weep and I’d plead,

Then hurl myself, hectic-frenetic, prostrate,

Under the hoofs of your dashing bay steed.

Or I’d go to a psychic and ask her advice,

How to conjure a new lover boy for my bed,

And I’d send you a gift, something weird but still nice,

Say, a fragrance-spewed kerchief in hues of bright red.

Go to hell. No moans of mine, no glances caring

Will purge your soul of its dark affliction,

And by angel-blessed gardens I’ll go on swearing,

On sacrosanct icons, by hell’s pitchest black,

By fumes from our hot nights of love un-despairing,

I promise, I swear that I’ll never come back.

                                              Natan Altman Painting

                                   Max Ernst, The Fireside Angel, 1937

Masha Matvejchuk declaims the poem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Adx-qa0GI