In a Dream
by Anna Akhmatova
The dark and solid separation
I’m carrying equally with you.
Why are you crying? Come
Give me your hand instead--
Promise again
To come in dreams.
You and I
Are like grief and the mountain--
We will not meet
In this world.
But sometimes
Will you send across the stars
A sign?
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This black and endless / separation: / I endure it too, everything — / Why are you crying? Come, / Give me your hand instead — / Promise again / To come in dreams.
cr poem: "in a dream" - anna akhmatova (trans. lenore maghew and william mcnaughton)
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Promise again
To come in dreams.
~•Anna Akhmatova•~
#Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems #photo Philomena Famulok
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A project was floated after World War II to have traffic signs all over the world prepared in Chinese "ideograms." Although the proposal was derided by Yale's widely respected Sinologist, George A. Kennedy, who called it "deranged," something like this has actually happened - with modern pictures, symbols, and especially meaning-meaning compounds, now to be seen on traffic signs and other public notices around the world: school crossing... men working... slippery when wet ... the list goes on.
William McNaughton, rev. Jiageng Fan, Reading and Writing Chinese: a Comprehensive Guide to the Chinese Writing System, 3rd ed.
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the winds talk to the stars sometimes. that’d be nice. i’d like that.
The Worm King’s Lullaby, Richard Siken | Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson | The Chronology of Water: A Memoir, Lidia Yuknavitch | I Dreamed I Forgot, Leila Chatti | Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, Anaïs Nin | Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka | Eurydice, Margaret Atwood | Sue Zhao | The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket | Ross Gay | Elegy for the Four Chambers of My Brother’s Heart, Steven Espada Dawson | In A Dream, trans. Lenore Mayhew & William Mcnaughton, Anna Akhmatova, | Sue Zhao | Francis Forever, Mitski | The Hurting Kind, Ada Limon
[ID: An assortment of quotes and lyrics from various sources.
1. Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.
2. I once loved you,/ now I don’t know you at all.
3. What lived and died between us - haunts me still.
4. I dreamed I forgot you/ but to dream was remembering. I have words for you/ only, a linguistic fidelity./ Cherish and anguish and fool./ I look for you, I am finding/ out if I am brave. Last/ I saw you, it was the same disruptive season: robins trilling in the young/ flush, trees shivering/ pink all down the street./ I thought the ache/ would ruin me, and maybe it did./ Here I am in the beatific after/ still calling back to you.
5. “You carry away with you a reflection of me, a part of me. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You will always be a part of my life. If I love you, is must be because we have shared at some time the same imaginings, the same madness
6. ship to you (you belong to me, even if I should never see you again) [...] these I know, insofar they do not fall into the
7. was that you love him anywhere,/ even in this land of no memory,/ even in this domain of hunger./ You hold love in your hand, a red seed/ you had forgotten you were holding.
8. We loved, didn’t we? I was devoted to you, like a nail to a bed. A splinter to skin. Sometimes I was soft, though, do you remember?
9. “(...) I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close... I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don't marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else--and I will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”
10. I am sorry. I am grateful./ I just want us to be friends now, forever./ Take this bowl of blackberries from the garden./ The sun has made them warm./ I picked them just for you. I promise/ I will try to stay on my side of the couch.
11. We’re under the same moon and I’m sick/ with that knowing.
12. You and I/ are like grief and the mountain,/ we will not meet/ in this world./ But sometimes/ will you send across the stars/ A sign?
13. If I could have done it all again, I would have loved you better. But I could not have loved you more.
14. And autumn comes when you’re not yet done/ With the summer passing by, but/ I don’t think I could stand to be/ Where you don’t see me.
15. I see the tree above the grave and think, I’m wearing/ my heart on leaves. My heart on leaves./ Love ends. But what if it doesn’t? End ID.]
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"I have much to do: I must kill my memories down to the last one, I must change my soul into stone, I must learn to live again."
— Anna Akhmatova, tr. by Lenore Mayhew and William Mcnaughton, from Poem Without A Hero and Selected Poems
Artwork: Nickie Zimov
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