Beauty is frightening," they will tell you —<br /><br />Lazily you will arrange<br /><br />A Spanish shawl on your shoulders,<br /><br />A red rose in your hair.<br /><br /><br />"Beauty is simple," they will tell you —<br /><br />Clumsily with a motley shawl<br /><br />You will cover a child up,<br /><br />A red rose on the floor.<br /><br /><br />But, distractedly heeding<br /><br />All the words sounding around you,<br /><br />Sadly lost in thought<br /><br />You will say about yourself:<br /><br /><br />'I am neither frightening nor simple;<br /><br />I am not so frightening, that I would simply<br /><br />Kill; I am not so simple<br /><br />That I do not know how frightening life is.'<br /><br />("For Anna Akhmatova")