“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.”

“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 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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”