The Guest by Anna Akhmatova (1914)
All as before: blustering snowflakes blew
Against the dining room window frame,
And I myself am nothing new,
But to me a man came.
I asked: «What do you need?»
He said: «To be in hell with you.»
I laughed: «Oh, I suppose you read
Misfortune for us two.»
But having raised his dry hand,
He gently touched the flowers:
«Tell me how they kiss you,
Tell me how you kiss.»
And his eyes, looking blurred,
Didn’t move from my ring.
Not one muscle stirred
In his clear-serpentine face.
Oh, I know: his joy —
Intensely and passionately knowing,
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing.
