Bella Akhmadulina
I SWEAR
I swear by this summer snapshot
of you, lonely as a gallows
braced on the porch of a stranger,
you were driven out of that house.
That crinkled satin dress
strangles your throat,
and you sit in our past, mute
to our hunger and grief.
It's too much for a beaten horse.
I swear by this picture, by the frail
sharp elbows as small as a child's
and by the long, drawn, dying smile
like an alibi for children.
I swear by the dark thrusts
wound in the airless griefs
and fevers of your poems,
that I, my throat bleeding,
will also cough and weep.
And I swear by this stolen image,
which I carry and never forget,
that you, a stranger, taboo,
are God's. He misses you.
I swear by your gaunt bones
crawling upon you like rat-teeth,
and by holy and blessed Russia
who forgets your deep asylum,
and by that bastard out of Africa
watching over the children,
and the children, by Tversky Boulevard,
and by the sad peace of a heaven
lacking profession and pain.
I'll kill your Yelabuga
and let the new grandchildren sleep,
even though the mothers of mothers
frighten them there in the evenings,
whispering, Yelabuga! She lives!
"Child, sleep; be still
