Broad gold, the evening colors glow,
The April air is cool and tender.
You should have come ten years ago,
And yet in welcome I surrender.
Come here, sit closer in our nook,
And turn gay eyes at what my nurses
Might never glimpse: the blue-bound book
That holds my awkward childish verses.
Forgive me that I did not look
Sunward with joy, but dwelt with sorrow,
Forgive me all whom I mistook
For you, oblivious of the morrow.
Return to the Anna Akhmatova Home Page, or . . . Read the next poem; Confession