Anna Akhmatova

At dawn they came and took you away. the holy candle gasped for air.

— Anna Akhmatova

This woman is sick to her marrow-bone, in jail. Pray for me. Pray.

— Anna Akhmatova

Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound. Night.

— Anna Akhmatova

For seventeen months I have cried aloud or on what day the word spells, "Kill!"

— Anna Akhmatova

The word dropped like a stone am somehow ready for the test.

— Anna Akhmatova

Today I have so much to do: Is like a festival outside my window.

— Anna Akhmatova

You will come in any case — so why not now? or else infect me — typhus be my lot —

— Anna Akhmatova

It's all the same to me. The Yenisei swirls, — The House on the Fontanka, 19 August 1939

— Anna Akhmatova

Already madness lifts its wing to cover half my soul.

— Anna Akhmatova

Now everything is clear. is the tongue of a stranger.

— Anna Akhmatova

No use to fall down on my knees is mine to take...

— Anna Akhmatova

A choir of angels glorified the hour, Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me..."

— Anna Akhmatova

Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, — 1940-1943

— Anna Akhmatova

I have learned how faces fall to bone, with me under that blind red wall.

— Anna Akhmatova

I've woven them a garment that's prepared for them, this eve of my remembrance day.

— Anna Akhmatova

I have a lot of work to do today;

— Anna Akhmatova

You will hear thunder and remember me,

— Anna Akhmatova

Flowers, cold from the dew,

— Anna Akhmatova

As the future ripens in the past,

— Anna Akhmatova

This cruel age has deflected me,

— Anna Akhmatova

I asked him then: 'What are you after?'

— Anna Akhmatova

O let the organ, many-voiced, sing boldly, Will meet your eyes just once and then no more.

— Anna Akhmatova

I go forth to seek — Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.

— Anna Akhmatova

You thought I was that type: And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare...

— Anna Akhmatova

Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul I will never come back to you.

— Anna Akhmatova

I don't know if you're alive or dead. Be mourned serenely in my thought?

— Anna Akhmatova

No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.

— Anna Akhmatova

Why is this century worse than those others? But couldn't heal it in its span of time.

— Anna Akhmatova

All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead.

— Anna Akhmatova

You will hear thunder and remember me, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

— Anna Akhmatova

That day in Moscow, it will all come true, Leaving my shadow still to be with you.

— Anna Akhmatova

A multi-colored crowd streaked about, It came from a strange land.

— Anna Akhmatova

Natural thunder heralds the wetness of fresh water to murder my child.

— Anna Akhmatova

Give me bitter years of sickness, Might become a cloud of glorious rays.

— Anna Akhmatova

Now no one will listen to songs. Don't break my heart, don't ring out.

— Anna Akhmatova

I am not one of those who left the land my songs are not for them to praise.

— Anna Akhmatova

But here, in the murk of conflagration, straighter than you … more proud...

— Anna Akhmatova

Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But I loved the silver willow best of all.

— Anna Akhmatova

Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree. Mute separations, mute black, bloody events in every family. Invisible mourning worn by mothers and wives. Now the arrested are returning, and two Russias stare each other in the eyes: the ones that put them in prison and the ones who were put in prison. A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together.

— Anna Akhmatova

The sand as white or the day, that is ending.

— Anna Akhmatova

You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain.

— Anna Akhmatova

Now you're gone, and nobody says a word at your dumb funeral feast.

— Anna Akhmatova

Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.

— Anna Akhmatova

And the just man trailed God's shining agent, where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."

— Anna Akhmatova

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem who suffered death because she chose to turn.

— Anna Akhmatova

Thinking of the sun causes quick lightly drifting.

— Anna Akhmatova

The silvery tree opens that I am not your husband.

— Anna Akhmatova

Thinking of the sun makes From this night winter begins.

— Anna Akhmatova

I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love

— Anna Akhmatova

All as before: against the dining-room windows Us both to disaster."

— Anna Akhmatova

You will hear thunder and remember me,

— Anna Akhmatova

But lifting his dry hand Tell me how you kiss men."

— Anna Akhmatova

Not a single muscle quivered That I can refuse him nothing.

— Anna Akhmatova

As a white stone in the well's cool deepness, Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.

— Anna Akhmatova

I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness, To make eternal the unearthly sadness.

— Anna Akhmatova

I hear always the sad voices over the high grass

— Anna Akhmatova

I do not need your loving words and happier.

— Anna Akhmatova

We aged a hundred years, and this the body of the ploughed plains smoked.

— Anna Akhmatova

We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, and — our former riches.

— Anna Akhmatova

This cruel age has deflected me, I never had the chance to meet.

— Anna Akhmatova

I know beginnings, I know endings too, I'd rather not recall just now.

— Anna Akhmatova

The grave I go to will not be my own. I should know at last what envy is.

— Anna Akhmatova

I have lit my treasured candles, though the hour has not yet struck.

— Anna Akhmatova

Dread. Bottomless dread... defending my remnant peace.

— Anna Akhmatova

Let the gossip roll! I am more iron than they.

— Anna Akhmatova

Prince Charming, prince of the mockers — is grace incarnate...

— Anna Akhmatova

That woman I once was, till the Day of Judgement.

— Anna Akhmatova

Are the last days near, perhaps? a terrible festival of dead leaves.

— Anna Akhmatova

All the mirrors on the wall turning left from the bridge?

— Anna Akhmatova

From childhood I have been afraid had slipped among them...

— Anna Akhmatova

You... You write laws of iron.

— Anna Akhmatova

Creature of special tastes, that, nor anything..

— Anna Akhmatova

Besides or die! But what am I trying to say?

— Anna Akhmatova

In the black sky no star is seen, and sing to us about holy vengeance...

— Anna Akhmatova

There is no death, each of us knows — I'll leave it to others to explain.

— Anna Akhmatova

Is this the visitor from the wrong side between the stove and the cupboard?

— Anna Akhmatova

This means that gravestones are fragile I would give the peace of the tomb.

— Anna Akhmatova

No foreign sky protected me, — 1961

— Anna Akhmatova

Such grief might make the mountain stoop, reverse the waters where they flow, but cannot burst these ponderous bolts that block us from the prison cells crowded with mortal woe...

— Anna Akhmatova

Such grief might make the mountain stoop, crowded with mortal woe...

— Anna Akhmatova

For some the wind can fleshly blow, to congregate, less live than dead.

— Anna Akhmatova

Where are they now, my nameless friends — March 1940

— Anna Akhmatova

That was a time when only the dead dangled outside its prison-house...

— Anna Akhmatova

The stars of death stood over us. under the wheels of Black Marias.

— Anna Akhmatova