IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK

Akhmatova Bereza

A song lyric

“Bereza” is one of the most beautiful words that I know. It is Russian for the Birch tree.

Not that Anna Akhmatova was named Bereza, that is just my tribute to her, attaching the most beautiful word to the most wondrous woman.

She was the Russian poet who refused to flee her country when most other intellectuals scrambled for France and survival.

“No,” she said. “I will stay, endure, and bear witness.”

Svetlana Stalin, the despot’s daughter, loved Anna Akhmatova’s poetry, and this was probably the one factor that kept Anna alive through the various Stalin purges.

Legend has it that when Anna returned to St. Petersburg (Leningrad, then) from Vladivostok after the Second World War, she stopped off in Moscow, where she took in the ballet one night. Spotted, she was prevailed upon to, after the performance, take the stage and recite some of her poems.

Once she finished her perhaps fifteen minutes or so impromptu recital the audience, to a man, woman, and child rose and gave her an equally long ovation. She was that loved.

When Stalin heard of this his only question was: “Who organized the ovation?”

To have had the courage to stare down this regime, with nothing but poems as weapons, and to survive.

Well, that was Akhmatova Beriosa.

This song is my tribute to her.

Once upon a clearing in among the birches smiling like a lost and inconsolable muse

I had brought a question: Would you come to Paris? Leaving now with us you know they won’t refuse

You said: I will be of no use there

Falling on my knees then ear against your belly opening the door to my confusion and hurt:

What good will you do here one among so many? What amount of hell can you alone avert?

You said: I will never desert them

Stillborn on my tongue I found my promise unsaid and bound for France the night I fled

It lingers like a poison this betrayal this dream undone: We will never face them as one

I can still recall you standing in that clearing regal as a mountainside and as apart

That is how I left you forested with silence finding then your voice again as I depart

You said: I will follow my heart true

You said: I will stay endure and bear witness

© Wolfstuff

To listen to my recording of this song, click here.