Something Else by BELLA AKHMADULINA

“What’s happened? For the past year I haven’t been able to write a poem--no longer seem to know how-- have lost the knack--possess nothing tangible but a heavy dumbness that fills my mouth.” You’ll say: “But look, now you have a stanza Four lines, a quatrain, part of a whole prepared--” “That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s second nature for me to slap lines together, word after word. “The hand’s the one in charge of such arrangements. No, that’s not what I’m talking about at all. I meant, before, when it wasn’t just verse that happened but something else. What was it? I can’t recall. “I wonder if it felt a sense of fear back when it had my voice boldly misbehaving and it laughed like laughter on my open lips and wept like weeping anytime it wanted?” From “The Garden: New and Selected Poetry and Prose,” a bilingual edition edited, introduced and translated from the Russian by F.D. Reeve (Owl Books/Henry Holt: $24.95, cloth; $14.94, paper). Born in 1937, Akhmadulina has been a celebrity in the Soviet Union since her teen-age poems were published in 1955. Even when she was expelled from the Writer’s Union as a translator, her poetry continued to be published in the major literary journals. 1990, Bella Akhmadulina; translation 1990, F.D. Reeve. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt & Co.