It happens like this: a kind of lethargy,
In my ears the sound of a clock chiming,
Thunder fading in the distance.

The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife’s bosom cried,

All is despoiled, abandoned, sold;
Death’s wing has swept the sky of color;
All’s eaten by a hungry dolor.

Anna Akhmatova’s poem “Secrets of the Trade,” translated by Jo Ann Clark with Zhenya Zafrin, appeared in our Winter 1996 issue. Akhmatova died in 1966; our columnist Anthony Madrid recently wrote about an epigram of hers.                   …