'I don't know if you're alive or dead -'

by Anna Akhmatova

　　Can you be found on earth so?

　　Or only in twilit thoughts instead,

　　Be mourned, in that peaceful glow?

　　All for you: the prayer by day,

　　The hot sleeplessness at night,

　　The white flock of poetry,

　　And the blue fire of my eyes.

　　No one was cherished more,

　　Or made me suffer: no, not

　　He who betrayed me to torment,

　　Nor he who caressed and forgot.