To Anna Who Is Afraid

by Susanna Lang

after Anna Akhmatova

Your neighbors won’t call this
a war

like they won’t complain 
about the price of sugar.

They’ll ask their mothers
how to make honey cake.

They turn away 
when they see you on the street,

avoiding questions about your son
who has not called in weeks.

They know as well as you 
he’s fighting in what they won’t call

war

but allow themselves to forget.
When you wonder

if you only dreamed a son
read your namesake’s poems,

another Anna, born in the country
where your son disappeared, like her son 

who vanished into prison. Though she tried
to slaughter memory

she could not. Instead
she promised to find the words,

promised to wail
with the wives of the murdered 

inconsolably
beneath the Kremlin towers.

You can join her there:

she will stay with you
when they take you inside. 

---

“‘To Anna Who Is Afraid’ grew out of a correspondence between a friend of a friend and a woman in Russia who had helped her facilitate workshops for women. The American woman invited others to send encouragement to her Russian associate, who was aghast at what her government was doing in Ukraine.” —Susanna Lang

Susanna Lang’s chapbook, Like This, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Books. Her e-chapbook, Among Other Stones: Conversations with Yves Bonnefoy, (Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics) and her translation of Baalbek by Nohad Salameh (Atelier du Grand Tétras) were both published in 2021. Her third full-length collection of poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published in 2017 by Terrapin Books. Her poems, translations and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as The Common, december, Delos, New Poetry in Translation, American Life in Poetry, Rhino Reviews, Calyx and The Slowdown. Her translations of poetry by Yves Bonnefoy include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, and she is now working with Souad Labbize and Hélène Dorion on new translations.