I came here, in idleness by Anna Akhmatova
I call to that mermaid by The pond: the mermaid’s dead
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I came here, in idleness
I came here, in idleness. Where I’m bored: all the same to me! A sleepy hilltop mill, yes, Here years pass silently. Over convolvulus gone dry The bee swims past, ahead, I call to that mermaid by The pond: the mermaid’s dead. Thick with mud, and rusted, The wide pond’s shallows: Over the trembling aspen A weightless moon glows. I see everything freshly. The poplars smell moist. I’m silent. Silent, ready To be yours again, earth.
Selected Poems Including ‘Requiem’ (2005). Translated by A. S. Kline.
This poem breathes with quiet surrender, where idleness becomes a doorway into deeper belonging.
The sleepy mill and silent years evoke a landscape heavy with time, yet tender in its stillness.
The dead mermaid by the pond symbolises lost enchantment, the fading of myth into earth’s silence.
Decay is everywhere mud, rust, trembling aspen, yet the moon glows weightless, offering fragile light.
Even in weariness, life persists: a bee swims past, carrying continuity through desolation.
The speaker’s silence is not emptiness but readiness, a vow to return to the soil.
Akhmatova humanises boredom as contemplation, where absence of motion opens into presence of truth.
Moist poplars and glowing moon suggest tenderness, a reminder that beauty survives beneath loss.
The poem transforms grief into belonging, turning mortality into reconciliation with the earth.
Ultimately, it is a hymn to return: to be held again by the ground, whole in surrender.