She said my eyes had a golden gleam,
but it was her eyes, her eyes that redeemed
the world—the way she translated all she saw
into slender verse. I still hear her voice, soft as rain,
as she’d say, 0 Il faut, voyez-vous,
nous pardonner les choses—reciting Verlaine
as we sat beneath my old black umbrella
in the Jardin du Luxembourg. I knew,
even then, she would leave me. Knew
that although she threw red roses onto my floor
she would always return to Russia, her home.
Oh, but the tapered length of her. Like a candle,
a dancer, an Egyptian queen. How
her figure astonishes me. I draw her always
by memory. She, with the poise
of a Siamese cat. She with her stray dog soul.
When she left me, she took a single scroll
with her portrait sketched in pencil.
She tells me she’s taped it above her couch.
But she never returned. She never
returned. Now all my lines are ghosts.
To see some of Modigliani’s images of Anna Akhmatova, visit: