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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”