The Guest
Everything’s just as it was: fine hard snow
beats against the dining room windows,
and I myself have not changed:
even so, a man came to call.
I asked him: “What do you want?”
He said, “To be with you in hell.”
I laughed “It seems you see
plenty of trouble ahead for us both.”
But lifting his dry hand
he lightly touched the flowers
“Tell me how they kiss you,
tell me how you kiss.”
And his half-closed eyes
remained on my ring.
Not even the smallest muscle moved
in his serenely angry face.
Oh, I know it fills him with joy-
this hard and passionate certainty
that there is nothing he needs,
and nothing I can keep from him.
- Anna Akhmatova
