Much needed daily nourishment for my soul in this cruel and violent world of ours. Poets are guardians of an important source of healing and inspiration. Pure alchemy.

Willow by Anna Akhmatova

And I grew up in patterned tranquility,

In the cool nursery of the young century.

And the voice of man was not dear to me,

But the voice of the wind I could understand.

But best of all the silver willow.

And obligingly, it lived

With me all my life; it’s weeping branches

Fanned my insomnia with dreams.

And strange! – I outlived it.

There the stump stands; with strange voices

Other willows are conversing

Under our, under those skies.

And I am silent … As if a brother had died.

Sunbeam by A.A.

I pray to the sunbeam from the window –

It is pale, thin, straight.

Since morning I have been silent,

And my heart – is split.

The copper on my washstand

Has turned green,

But the sunbeam plays on it

So charmingly.

How innocent it is, and simple,

In the evening calm,

But to me in this deserted temple

It’s like a golden celebration,

And a consolation.

Anna Akhmatova 1889 – 1966

‘A young writer said of the two greatest Russian woman poets of the C20th: Tsvetaeva was a poet who had no paradise.Akhmatova had paradise.’ We can agree with this assessment, but A’s paradise is that of a person under severe trial – the paradise of a great C20th prophet. Philip McDonagh, poet and Irish ambassador to Russia 26.06 2010.