Anna Akhmatova
It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.Collection: Death
Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.Collection: Courage
All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.
I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.
My shadow serves as the friend I craveCollection: Shadow
As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.Collection: Past
It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.Collection: Soul
You will hear thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms.Collection: Thinking
The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.Collection: Stars
Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.Collection: Confused
There is a sacred, secret line in loving which attraction and even passion cannot cross.Collection: Love
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 loveCollection: Pain
Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Heart
Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.Collection: Dream
Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief.Collection: Grief
You do not know just what you've been forgiven.Collection: Forgiven
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.Collection: Blue
The secret of secrets is inside me again.Collection: Secret
I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.Collection: Garden
I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.Collection: Dream
Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again. Unless ... Summer's ardent rustling is like a festival outside my window.Collection: Summer
Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue.Collection: Simple
If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Dream
I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise.Collection: Song
We learned not to meet anymore, We don't raise our eyes to one another, But we ourselves won't guarantee What could happen to us in an hour.Collection: Eye
If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.Collection: Spirit
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.Collection: Summer
How the miracle of our meeting Shone there and sang, I didn't want to return From there to anywhere. Happiness instead of duty Was 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 souls At the limits of the world.Collection: Passion
You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I'd plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I'd ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.Collection: Broken Heart
The celebrations Of secret nonmeetings are empty, Unspoken conversations, Unuttered words. Glances that don't intersect Don't know where to come to rest. And only the tears rejoice Because they can flow and flow. Sweetbrier around Moscow, Alas! Somehow it is here ... And all this they will call Love eternal.Collection: Secret
Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.Collection: Beautiful
I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted houseCollection: Long
Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.Collection: People
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 groans I 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.Collection: Beautiful
All that I am hangs by a thread tonightCollection: Tonight
Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul, But I loved the silver willow best of all.Collection: Sweet
That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.Collection: Glad
I myself, from the very beginning, Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium Or a reflection in someone else's mirror, Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. Already I knew the list of crimes That I was destined to commit.Collection: Dream
A land not mine, still forever memorable, the waters of its ocean chill and fresh. Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk, and the air drunk, like wine, late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pinetrees. Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.Collection: Ocean
The triumphs of a mysterious non-meeting are desolate ones; unspoken phrases, silent words.Collection: Communication
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 springlike Extraordinary beauty. But in a whirlwind of sound and fire, From her shing head they will flutter And falland before her They 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.Collection: Flower
Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound; I could never have borne it. So take the thing that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground; whisk the lamps away.Collection: Sadness
This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet.Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Light