'Here we're all drunkards and whores,'

by Anna Akhmatova

　　Joylessly stuck together!

　　On the walls, birds and flowers

　　Pine for the clouds and air.

　　The smoke from your black pipe

　　Makes strange vapours rise.

　　The skirt I wear is tight,

　　Revealing my slim thighs.

　　Windows tightly closed:

　　Who's there, frost or thunder?

　　Your eyes, are they those

　　Of some cautious cat, I wonder?

　　O, my heart how you yearn!

　　Is it for death you wait?

　　Or that girl, dancing there,

　　For hell to be her sure fate?