In a Dream by Anna Akhmatova

"Why are you crying?"

In a Dream 
by Anna Akhmatova

This black and endless
Separation: 
I endure it too, everything — 
Why are you crying? Come, 
Give me your hand instead — 
                                    promise again 
To come in dreams.

You and I 
Are like grief and the mountain, 
We will not meet 
                       in this world. 
But sometimes 
                       will you send across the stars 
A sign?

Translated by Lenore Mayhew and William McNaughton, from Poem Without a Hero and Selected Poems (Oberlin College Press, 1989)