Summer garden

I want to roses, in that only garden,
Where is the best in the world standing out of fences,

Where the statues remember me young,
And I remember them under the nevskoyu water.

In the fragrant quiet between the royal lindens
To me the masts of the ships seem to be creaking.

And the swan, as before, swims through the centuries,
Admiring the beauty of his double.

And hundreds of thousands of steps sleep
Enemies and friends, friends and enemies.

And the procession of shadows can not see the end
From the granite vase to the palace door.

There are whispering white nights of mine
About someone’s high and secret love.

And everything with mother-of-pearl and jasper burns,
But the light is mysteriously hidden.

Anna Akhmatova

Leningrad, 1959