IMAGINARY CONVERSATION AFTER THE FACT: OSIP MANDELSTAM TO ANNA AKHMATOVA
Thus have they laid our honeycombed sun to rest
When we walked along the Neva in the earliest days
Thinking of the sublime
In Petersburg when it was ours
And all of classical poetry seemed
For you at least but the prelude to your swans drift
Drifting Anna, I was drifting there as well
Happy at any feast, infatuated and cherry dark Nadezhda
At my side yet also your Muse’s friend I WAS; I think a cameo
Friend perhaps appearing now in the skies above your star crowned head
In our separate heavens, Anna
A man with a bird lodged in his heart I was on earth
That God released into poetry as into a mirror laden dream
And into the open air where
They shot it dead. The archers of our time.
A futile gesture on their part we would agree
In our cloudlike states, still ironic.
Now we are the immortals.
As if it mattered to anyone but the angels.
Drifting Anna, queen of snowlike gestures
Of poetic alacrity. My friend.
mary angela douglas 6 june 2024
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