The Guest : a poem by Anna Akhmatova

The Guest

Nothing is changed: against the dining room windows

hard grains of whirling snow still beat.

I am what I was

But a man came to me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“To be with you in hell,” he said.

I laughed. “It’s plain you mean

to have us both destroyed.”

He lifted his thin hand

and lightly stroked the flowers:

“Tell me how men kiss you,

tell me how you kiss.”

His torpid eyes were fixed

unblinking on my ring.

Not a single muscle stirred

in his clear, sardonic face.

Oh, I see: his game is that he knows

intimately, ardently,

there’s nothing from me he wants,

I have nothing to refuse.

Anna Akhmatova

- 1 January 1914

(Taken from the book, The Erotic Spirit. Translated by  Max Hayward and Stanley Kunits)