Anna Akhmatova

“... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood,with the bounty and vigilance of the stars,the whole world was his inheritanceand he shared it with everyone.”

“It is good here: rustle and snow-crunch...Ski tracks on the splendid fineryof the snow; a memorythat long ages agowe passed here together.”

“Call me a sinner,Mock me maliciously:I was your insomnia,I was your grief.”

“Rising from the past, my shadowIs running in silence to meet me.”

“Not under foreign skiesNor under foreign wings protected -I shared all this with my own peopleThere, where misfortune had abandoned us.”

“You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.”

“We learned not to meet anymore,We don't raise our eyes to one another,But we ourselves won't guaranteeWhat could happen to us in an hour.”

“And this tenderness was not likeThat which a certain poetAt the beginning of the century called trueAnd, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all—It rang out, like the first waterfall,It crunched like the crust of bluish iceAnd it prayed with a swanlike voice,And it broke down right before our eyes.”

“Your voice is wild and simple.You are untranslatableInto any one tongue.”

“I seem to myself, as in a dream,An accidental guest in this dreadful body.”

“If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.”

“Forgive me, that I manage badly,Manage badly but live gloriously,That I leave traces of myself in my songs,That I appeared to you in waking dreams.”

“Flowers, cold from the dew,And autumn's approaching breath,I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,Which haven't faded yet.In their nights, fragrantly resinous,Entwined with delightful mystery,They will breathe in her springlikeExtraordinary beauty.But in a whirlwind of sound and fire,From her shing head they will flutterAnd fall—and before herThey will die, faintly fragrant still.And, impelled by faithful longing,My obedient gaze will feast upon them—With a reverent hand,Love will gather their rotting remains.”

“Let my heiress have full rights,Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,How the tortured breast craves air.The love of my friends, my enemies' rancorAnd the yellow roses in my bushy garden,And a lover's burning tenderness—all thisI bestow upon you, messenger of dawn.Also the glory for which I was born,For which my star, like some whirlwind, soaredAnd now falls. Look, its fallingProphesies your power, love and inspiration.Preserving my generous bequest,You will live long and worthily.Thus it will be. You see, I am content,Be happy, but remember me.”

“And you know, I agree to everything:I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy,Darkness will be light and sin lovely.”

“Though you are three times more beautiful than angels,Though you are the sister of the river willows,I will kill you with my singing,Without spilling your blood on the ground.Not touching you with my hand,Not giving you one glance, I will stop loving you,But with your unimaginable groansI will finally slake my thirst.From her, who wandered the earth before me,Crueler than ice, more fiery than flame,From her, who still exists in the ether—From her you will set me free.”

“Now that you're there, where everything is known—tell me:What else lived in that house besides us?”

“This land, although not my native land,Will be remembered forever.And the sea's lightly iced,Unsalty water.The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,The air is heady, like wine,And the rosy body of the pinesIs naked in the sunset hour.And the sunset itself on such waves of etherThat I just can't comprehendWhether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.”

“Song falls silent, music is dumb,But the air burns with their fragrance,And white winter, on its knees,Observes everything with reverent attention.”

“Let whoever wants to, relax in the south,And bask in the garden of paradise.Here is the essence of north—and it's autumnI've chosen as this year's friend.”

“You invented me. There is no such earthly being,Such an earthly being there could never be.A doctor cannot cure, a poet cannot comfort—A shadowy apparition haunts you night and day.We met in an unbelievable year,When the world's strength was at an ebb,Everything withered by adversity,And only the graves were fresh. Without streetlights, the Neva's waves were black as pitch,Thick night enclosed me like a wall ...That's when my voice called out to you!Why it did—I still don't understand.And you came to me, as if guided by a starThat tragic autumn, steppingInto that irrevocably ruined house,From whence had flown a flock of burnt verse.”

“How the miracle of our meetingShone there and sang,I didn't want to returnFrom there to anywhere.Happiness instead of dutyWas bitter delight to me.Not obliged to speak to anyone,I spoke for a long while.Let passions stifle lovers,Demanding answers,We, my dear, are only soulsAt the limits of the world.”

“The celebrationsOf secret nonmeetings are empty,Unspoken conversations,Unuttered words.Glances that don't intersectDon't know where to come to rest.And only the tears rejoiceBecause they can flow and flow. Sweetbrier around Moscow,Alas! Somehow it is here ...And all this they will callLove eternal.”

“My shadow serves as the friend I crave.”

“Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seemtoo insignificant for our concern?Yet in my heart I never will deny her,who suffered death because she chose to turn.- Lot's Wife”

“Wild honey smells of freedom The dust - of sunlight The mouth of a young girl, like a violetBut gold - smells of nothing.”

“Έχω σήμερα πολλές δουλειές. Για μέτρα:πρέπει κάθε μνήμη ευθύς να σκοτωθείπρέπει την καρδιά να κάνω πέτραπρέπει πάλι τη ζωή να μάθω απ' την αρχή.”

“As the future ripens in the past,so the past rots in the future --a terrible festival of dead leaves.”

“I myself, from the very beginning,Seemed to myself like someone's dream or deliriumOr a reflection in someone else's mirror,Without flesh, without meaning, without a name.Already I knew the list of crimesThat I was destined to commit.”

“All's ringing, roaring, grinding, breakers' crash - and silence all at once, release:it means he is tiptoeing over pine needles,so as not to startle the light sleep of space.And it means he is counting the grainsin the blasted ears; it meanshe has come again to the Daryal Gorge,accursed and black, from another funeral.And again Moscow, where the heart's fever burns.Far off the deadly sleighbell chimes,someone is lost two steps from homein waist-high snow. The worst of times...”

“I know beginnings, I know endings too,and life-in-death, and something elseI'd rather not recall just now.”

“This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I've missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet.”

“A land not mine, stillforever memorable,the waters of its oceanchill and fresh.Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,and the air drunk, like wine,late sun lays barethe rosy limbs of the pinetrees.Sunset in the ethereal waves:I cannot tell if the dayis ending, or the world, or ifthe secret of secrets is inside me again.”

“We are all carousers and loose women here;How unhappy we are together!”

“You do not know just what you've been forgiven.”

“It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.”

“The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast. Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest. I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again. . . But how. The hot summer rustles Like a carnival outside my window; I have long had this premonition Of a bright day and a deserted house. ”

“That was when the ones who smiledWere the dead, glad to be at rest.”

“And it seemed to me that there were firesFlying till dawn without numberAnd I never found out things-thoseStrange eyes of his-what colour?Everything trembling and singing andWere you my enemy or my friend,Winter was it or summer?”

“You will hear thunder and remember me,and think: she wanted storms...”

“During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’I said, ‘I can!’Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.”