Akhmatova.2

Excessive amounts of philosophy are throwing me with a vengeance at poetry to balance it out. Here's one from my "Christmas present to myself" (they told me to do it on the radio--don't forget about yourself!)--a brand spanking new used copy of Anna Akhmatova's poems: (What does it even mean to give yourself a Christmas present? Isn't that all we do our whole lives [buy ourselves things]? It just means something that you buy for yourself in December?)

There Are Four of Us

Herewith I solemnly renounce my hoard

of earthly goods, whatever counts as chattel.

The genius and guardian angel of this place

has changed to an old tree-stump in the water.

Earth takes us in awhile as transient guests;

we live by habit, which we must unlearn.

On paths of air I seem to overhear

two friends, two voices, talking in their turn.

Did I say two? ... There by the eastern wall,

where criss-cross shoots of brambles trail,

--O look!--that fresh dark elderberry branch

is like a letter from Marina in the mail.

--November 1961 (in delirium)

The spiritual emphasis of this poem stands out, because it is through this preferring of the spiritual world that there is a recognition of the presence of the dead. In fact the physical world seems important, for the most part, only insofar as it points us back to the spiritual (i.e. the guardian angel as tree stump and the branch as a letter from a [likely deceased] friend).