'How I loved, and love, to look'

by Anna Akhmatova

　　At your chained shores,

　　At the balconies on which centuries

　　Never set foot.

　　And you are truly the capital,

　　For we who are mad and luminous;

　　But when those pure and special hours

　　Linger above the Neva,

　　And the wind in May sweeps round

　　The columns that edge the water,

　　You are like a sinner seeing, before death,

　　A sweetest dream of paradise.