Quotes from Anna Akhmatova

Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.

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.

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

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.

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

Wild honey smells of freedom The dust - of sunlight The mouth of a young girl, like a violet But gold - smells of nothing.

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.

This land, although not my native land, Will be remembered forever. And the sea's lightly iced, Unsalty water. The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk, The air is heady, like wine, And the rosy body of the pines Is naked in the sunset hour. And the sunset itself on such waves of ether That I just can't comprehend Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world, Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.

And it seemed to me that there were fires Flying till dawn without number And I never found out things-those Strange eyes of his-what colour? Everything trembling and singing and Were you my enemy or my friend, Winter was it or summer?

That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

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--

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.

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

We don't know how to say goodbye, We wander on, shoulder to shoulder Already the sun is going down You're moody, and I am your shadow. Let's step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the dead Why are we so different from the rest? Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch. That stick in your hand is tracing Mansions in the snow in which we will always be together.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.

It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.

There is a sacred, secret line in loving which attraction and even passion cannot cross.

The triumphs of a mysterious non-meeting are desolate ones; unspoken phrases, silent words.

Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.

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

The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias.

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.

Wild honey smells of freedom The dust - of sunlight The mouth of a young girl, like a violet But gold - smells of nothing.

As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.