Summer Garden | A poem by Anna Akhmatova, 1959

Leonor Fini, The Passenger, 1964
I want to visit the roses
In that lonely
Park where the statues remember me young
And I remember them under the water
Of the Neva. In the fragrant quiet
Between the limes of Tsarskoye I hear
A creak of masts. And the swan swims
Still, admiring its lovely
Double. And a hundred thousand steps,
Friend and enemy, enemy and friend,
Sleep. Endless is the procession of shades
Between granite vase and palace door.
There my white nights
Whisper of someone’s discreet exalted
Love. And everything is mother-
Of-pearl and jasper,
But the light’s source is a secret.
Anna Akhmatova, Summer Garden, July, 1959, Leningrad
tr. D. M. Thomas

The railing of Summer Garden
The Summer Garden (Ле́тний сад ) is a historic public garden that occupies an eponymous island between the Neva, Fontanka, Moika, and the Swan Canal in downtown Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Also:
Anna Akhmatova | Sketches by Amedeo Modigliani, 1911
A land not mine | A poem by Anna Akhmatova, 1964