Anna Akhmatova Quotes
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Give me bitter years of sickness, Suffocation, insomnia, fever, Take my child and my lover, And my mysterious gift of song - This I pray at your liturgy After so many tormented days, So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia Might become a cloud of glorious rays.
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We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and - our former riches.
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I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness, Men into things, not killing humane senses. You've been turned in to my reminiscences To make eternal the unearthly sadness.
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I've woven them a garment that's prepared out of poor words, those that I overheard, and will hold fast to every word and glance all of my days, even in new mischance, and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth, through which a hundred million people shout, then let them pray for me, as I do pray for them, this eve of my remembrance day.
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For some the wind can fleshly blow, for some the sunlight fade at ease, but we, made partners in our dread, hear but the grating of the keys, and heavy-booted soldiers' tread. As if for early mass, we rose and each day walked the wilderness, trudging through silent street and square, to congregate, less live than dead.
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Let the gossip roll! What to me are Hamlet's garters, or the whirlwind of Salome's dance, or the tread of the Man in the Iron Mask? I am more iron than they.
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Not a single muscle quivered On his radiantly evil face. Oh, I know: his delight Is the tense and passionate knowledge That he needs nothing, That I can refuse him nothing.
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There is no death, each of us knows - it's banal to say. I'll leave it to others to explain.
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That day in Moscow, it will all come true, when, for the last time, I take my leave, And hasten to the heights that I have longed for, Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
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Are the last days near, perhaps? I have forgotten your lessons, prattlers and false prophets, but you haven't forgotten me. As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future - a terrible festival of dead leaves.
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The silvery tree opens to an empty sky - maybe it is better that I am not your husband.
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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... Night.
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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 icon, And by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.
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At dawn they came and took you away. You were my dead: I walked behind. In the dark room children cried, the holy candle gasped for air.
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As a white stone in the well's cool deepness, There lays in me one wonderful remembrance. I am not able and don't want to miss this: It is my torture and my utter gladness. I think, that he whose look will be directed Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.
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Why is this century worse than those others? Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm, It only touched the blackest of the ulcers, But couldn't heal it in its span of time.
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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.
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Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.
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I don't know if you're alive or dead. Can you on earth be sought, Or only when the sunsets fade Be mourned serenely in my thought?
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The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias.
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The sand as white as old bones, the pine trees strangely red where the sun comes down. I cannot say if it is our love, or the day, that is ending.
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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.
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Now you're gone, and nobody says a word about your troubled and exalted life. Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast.
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All as before: against the dining-room windows Beats the scattered windswept snow, And I have not changed either, But a man came to me. I asked: 'What do you want?' He replied: 'To be with you in Hell.' I laughed: 'Oh, you'll foredoom Us both to disaster.'