Your pen-and-ink nude of Akhmatova
worships her slender form, lithe curves of her
long arms. Your yearlong affair shaped a trove
for her poems. When you lashed as lovers,
volcanoes wakened, your artists’ passions
firing new stars. She returned to marriage
and fame: Dubbed “Anna of all the Russias”
at 23. In Paris, disparaged
by debt, booze, and TB, you never stopped
painting with fire, portraying mistresses,
friends with almond-shaped heads, affixed atop
narrow necks like stretched stumps of stripped birches.
Meninges ablaze, you burned up inside,
only 35 and broke when you died.
Roger Armbrust
July 7, 2007
