The Guest

Nothing is different: thin snow beats
Against the dining-room window-pane.
I am totally unchanged,
But a man came to see me.

I asked: 'What do you want?'
He said: 'To be with you in hell.'
I laughed, 'Ah, there I can't
Oblige you, you'd wish us ill.'

His dry hand touched a petal
With a light caress.
'Tell me how they kiss you,
Tell me how you kiss.'

And his eyes, glinting dully,
Never slid from my ring;
Never a single muscle
Moved under his snakeskin.

O I know: his joy, his greed,
Is to know intensely, eye to eye,
There's nothing that he needs,
Nothing I can deny.

-Anna Akhmatova