“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”