Quotes from Anna Akhmatova

Let love be the gravestone Lying on my life.

I have much to do: I must kill my memories down to the last one, I must change my soul into stone , I must learn to live again.

Not under foreign skies Nor under foreign wings protected - I shared all this with my own people There, where misfortune had abandoned us.

Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. The sky is high, the mountain wind is sweeping, And all my thoughts are innocent and pure.

I've got no more tears or explanations.

How many poems did I not write? They hang in the air around me, a weird choir, And some day May suffocate me...

If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, give me a bitter glory.

Monstrously giving birth to yourself, Admiring yourself and choking on yourself, Are you not, alas, the only tie Between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? It seems to me that you are always on the boundary.

And you, my friends! So few of you remain That you are dearer daily. I rejoice In you. How short the road has become, That once appeared the longest road of all.

Will you forgive me these November days?

Once taken by her, you glowed And you drank her poisons, content. Because all the stars seemed to grow, And fields had a different scent, Autumn fields.

I don't know if you're alive or dead. Can you on earth be sought, or only when the sunsets fade be mourned secretly in my thought? All is for you: the daily prayer, the sleepless heat at night, and of my verses, the white flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire. No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured me more, not even the one who betrayed me to torture, not even the one who caressed me and forgot.

And in the depths of music, I didn't find the answer, And again there was silence, and again the ghost of summer.

Autumn, whispering through the maples, Pleaded: 'Die here with me!

He left his soul behind and told me: It'll be safer by your side.

All's taken away: my love and my power. The body, thrown into city it hates, Finds no joy in the sunlight. With every hour The blood grows colder in my veins.

I've ceased to smile long ago, The bitter winds now chill my lips, Another hope was just let go, Another song was added since. Against my will, I'll cede this song To people's laughter and offense, Because love's silence for the soul Is too unbearably immense.

I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house

A town loved with bitter love.

Could Beatrice have written like Dante, or Laura have glorified love's pain? I set the style for women's speech. God help me shut them up again!

True Tenderness" True tenderness is silent and can't be mistaken for anything else. In vain with earnest desire you cover my shoulders with fur; In vain you try to persuade me of the merits of first love. But I know too well the meaning of your persistent burning glances.

I'm not grieving, I'm not angry, and only darkness accompanies me. How deep it is and velvety, above all, always familiar to me…

For this gloomy beast within my breast - A heart. But the thing is, We've all had to learn not to sleep for three years. In the morning we shall find out Who has died in the night.

I'm happy. But some beauty is nonesuch - The gently sloping path across the wood, The wretched bridge that's just a little skewed And that, for which, I won't be waiting much.