Happy Birthday, Anna

Anna Akhmatova (Анна Ахматова) was born today in 1889 in Odesa, Ukraine. That was her pen name; she was born Anna Andreevna Gorenko (Russian: Анна Андреевна Горенко; Ukrainian: Ганна Андріївна Горенко). She wrote under her grandfather's Tatar surname because her father didn't wish her to embarrass him by publishing verse using the family's honorable name...

One of Russia's greatest poets. Once, long years ago (1974 in fact), one of my Russian professors (Russian by birth) was talking about gendered nouns to a first-year class. One of his examples of professions: поэт and поэтесса (poet and poetess). All women were "poetesses", not poets, he said, and something in the way he said it evoked Victorians and their "lady authoresses". So I asked him, Even Akhmatova?

And he said: Аг! Ахматова! Она настоящий поэт! (Ah, Akhmatova! She is a genuine poet!)

Подушка уже горяча
С обеих сторон.
Вот и вторая свеча
Гаснет, и крик ворон
Становится все слышней.
Я эту ночь не спала,
Поздно думать о сне...
Как нестерпимо бела
Штора на белом окне.
Здравствуй!

And as translated by Andrey Kneller:

The pillow is already hot
On both its sides.
The second candle’s at
Its end, and ravens’ cries
Are now resounding near.
I didn’t sleep this night,
Too late for sleep I fear,
Oh, how unbearably white
Is this curtain here.
Welcome!

Find her in Russian and English here. And her Poets.org page.
And her Requiem in Russian and English.