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No use to fall down on my knees and beg for mercy's sake. Nothing I counted mine, out of my life, is mine to take...
Anna Akhmatova -
There is no death, each of us knows - it's banal to say. I'll leave it to others to explain.
Anna Akhmatova
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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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
The silvery tree opens to an empty sky - maybe it is better that I am not your husband.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova
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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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
O let the organ, many-voiced, sing boldly, O let it roar like spring's first thunderstorm! My half-closed eyes over your young bride's shoulder Will meet your eyes just once and then no more.
Anna Akhmatova -
Prince Charming, prince of the mockers - compared with him the foulest of sinners is grace incarnate...
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.'
Anna Akhmatova
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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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova -
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.
Anna Akhmatova
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I go forth to seek - To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.
Anna Akhmatova -
Dread. Bottomless dread... I am that shadow on the threshold defending my remnant peace.
Anna Akhmatova -
I do not need your loving words or hurried kiss as night comes down in the place where we once lived innocent as children, and happier.
Anna Akhmatova -
I hear always the sad voices of summer passing like red winged birds over the high grass
Anna Akhmatova