It isn't happiness I seek

After Anna Akhmatova


It isn't happiness I seek.
My lover leaves to visit a lover.
I put my tired child to sleep
like a good mother.

I kneel in my cool, calm room
and pray to the angels -
how hard it is to live alone
and to pretend to be cheerful.

I ask for a vision of passion,
walking the path I know too well,
in my usual fashion,
to the cold, stone building on the hill.


Carol Ann Duffy