Vox Populi
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John Balaban: Anna Akhmatova Spends the Night on Miami Beach
Well, her book, anyway. The Kunitz volume
left lying on a bench, the pages
a bit puffy by morning, flushed with dew,
riffled by sea breeze, scratchy with sand
–the paperback with the 1930’s photo
showing her in spangled caftan, its back cover
calling her “star of the St. Petersburg circle
of Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Blok,
surviving the Revolution and two World Wars.”
So she’d been through worse…
the months outside Lefortovo prison
waiting for a son who was already dead, watching
women stagger and reel with news of executions,
one mother asking, “Can you write about this?”
Akhmatova thinking, then answering, “Yes.”
.
If music lured her off the sandy bench
to the clubs where men were kissing
être outré wouldn’t have concerned her much
nor the vamps shashaying in leather.
Decadence amid art deco fit nicely
with her black dress, chopped hair, Chanel cap.
What killed her was the talk, the empty eyes,
which made her long for the one person in ten thousand
who could say her name, who could take her home,
giving her a place between Auden and Apollinaire
to whom she could describe her night’s excursion
amid the loud hilarities, the consuming hungers,
arriving towards the end of the American era.
Copyright 2019 John Balaban. From Empires by John Balaban (Copper Canyon Press, 2019)
John Balaban is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose. His awards include The Academy of American Poets’ Lamont Prize, the National Poetry Series, the William Carlos Williams Award, the George Garrett Award, and a medal from the Ministry of Culture of Vietnam for his translations of poetry and his restoration of ancient texts.
Vox Populi 
Have always loved this poem….hearts full of truth—Anna’s and John’s
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Thanks, Nora! It’s one of my favorites too. Derived from an accident…I loaned a friend the book and he left on my front porch in Miami, where the salty air took its toll on it overnight and started me thinking when I found it the next morning.
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thanks, John!
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Sweet and sour. As it should be.
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Wonderful to see this one again. Thanks, Vox Populi.
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Just wonderful! Thank you.
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How wonderful to read a poem by John Balaban — I’m a fan of his! His description of that book!
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Yes, John’s poetry has a simple elegance, an ethical dignity.
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So great to see this here!
Miss you John.
-Sean
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Thanks, Sean. I’ll be down in Sarasota, Sept 7. I’ll write you about that later today.
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