Summer Garden
"I want to visit the roses
In that lonely
Park where the statues remember me young
And I remember them under the water
Of the Neva. In the fragrant quiet
Between the limes of Tsarskoye I hear
A creak of masts. And the swan swims
Still, admiring its lovely
Double. And a hundred thousand steps,
Friend and enemy, enemy and friend,
Sleep. Endless is the procession of shade
Between granite vase and palace door.
There my white nights
Whisper of someone's discreet exalted
Love. And everything is mother-
Of-pearl and jasper,
But the light's source is a secret."
- Anna Akhmatova, July 1959, Leningrad.
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