Beauty is frightening," they will tell you —

Lazily you will arrange

A Spanish shawl on your shoulders,

A red rose in your hair.


"Beauty is simple," they will tell you —

Clumsily with a motley shawl

You will cover a child up,

A red rose on the floor.


But, distractedly heeding

All the words sounding around you,

Sadly lost in thought

You will say about yourself:


'I am neither frightening nor simple;

I am not so frightening, that I would simply

Kill; I am not so simple

That I do not know how frightening life is.'

("For Anna Akhmatova")

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