Quotes from Anna Akhmatova

Tomorrow the mirrors will mock me

I marvel at everything as if it were new.

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.

Seaside gusts of wind, And a house in which we don't live, And the shadow of a cherished cedar In front of a forbidden window... Perhaps there is someone in this world To whom I could send all these lines. Well then! Let the lips smile bitterly And a tremor touch the heart again.

He loved three things alone: White peacocks, evensong, old maps of America. He hated children crying, and raspberry jam with his tea, and womanish hysteria. ...And then he married me. 1911

Oh, my home is not my own – I lament and rue. Answer, stranger yet unknown, I am seeking you!

They soar, they are somewhere mid-flight, The words of love and liberation And I'm succumbing to stage-fright, My lips – ice cold in trepidation. But soon, where birches, thin and humble, Caress the windows with their leaves, - The voice of the unseen will rumble And roses will be tied in wreaths.

On Hemingway: Have you noticed how lonely all people in his works are - no relatives, no family?

And you, my friends who have been called away, I have been spared to mourn for you and weep, not as a frozen willow over your memory, but to cry to the world the names of those who sleep. What names are those! I slam shut the calendar, down on your knees, all! Blood of my heart, the people of Leningrad march out in even rows, the living, the dead: fame can't tell them apart.

I know: yes, no, even I must tear off The delicate daisy petals. Everyone on earth is destined to feel The torments of love.

Don't kiss me, I am weary - Death will kiss me.

Beyond the lake the waning moon has slowed, And stands there like a window open wide Into a hushed and brightly lit abode Where something dreadful has occurred inside.

All my contemporaries— hundred-and-fivers or convicts— will tell you how we lived in barely sentient fear, raising children for the executioner, prison, or the torture chamber.

I live like a cuckoo in a clock, I'm not jealous of the forest birds. They wind me up—and I cuckoo. You know—such a fate I could only wish For someone I hate.

We never quite learned to part, -We wander slowly side by side. Outside it's starting to get dark, I'm silent, - you're preoccupied. We'll enter a church and we'll see Baptisms, marriages, mass. A minute later, we'll leave… Why is everything different with us? Or we'll sit on the trampled snow In a dark cemetery and sigh, With a stick in your hand, you'll draw A palace for just you and I.

Before the spring arrives there are such days: Under the thick snow cover rests the lawn, The dry-and-jolly trees are making noise, Tender and strong, the wind is warm. And body is amazed at its own lightness, And your own home is alien to you, And song that had just previously been tiring With worry you are singing just like new.

Now prisoners will come back home, and two Russias will look each other in the eye, the one that put in prison and the one that was put in prison.

First as a serpent, it'll cast its spell Next to your heart, curled up. Then it'll come as a dove as well, Cooing for days nonstop.

All ten years of my trepidations, Each and every sleepless night, I placed them all in a quiet word And I voiced it – in vain, unsure. You walked off and with order restored, My soul was empty and pure. - From "Confusion", Anna Akhmatova, Rosary

I, the half-mad mourner of buried days

An ordinary woman Took my unique place Used my real name Left me a pseudonym

Half-closes her eyes — eyelids heavy with poems.

The Last Toast I drink to our demolished hose, to all this wickedness, to you, our loneliness together, I raise my glass - And to the dead-cold eyes, the lie that has betrayed us, the coarse, brutal world, the fact that God has not saved us. 1934

You dreamt of me, I knew, And hence I couldn't sleep. The lantern flickered blue And there my path ran steep. [...] "This is a lake," you thought. "There is an island here..." Just then, on the darkened road, A little blue light appeared. By wretched sunlight severed, You stirred and moaned in pain, And for the first time ever, You called me by my name.