I saw Bella Akhatovna only once: on April 23 this year, when the exhibition of her husband, the painter Boris Messerer, was opened at the VN museum. I hope I'll be pardoned for the following lines (and for leaving them untranslated):

 

"а всё ж душа - белым-бела"

 

Белый снег заметает землю.

Белым сном позабылась Белла.

С белой грустью теперь я внемлю

Белой песне, что Ты нам пела.

 

Incidentally, November 28 was Aleksandr Blok's 130th birthday. In one of his poems Blok says: А ты, душа... душа глухая... Пьяным пьяна... пьяным пьяна ("And you, my soul, my obscure soul, You are drunk, you are very drunk"). The epigraph (a line from Akhmadullina) to my little poem translates: "Still, the soul is very white".

 

from snow-white St. Petersburg,

Alexey Sklyarenko