Quotes from Anna Akhmatova

I didn't want this kind of death, The time-frame that I chose was different.

I'm silent. Silently, I'm ready To be transformed, earth, into you.

Thus I live, without singing at all. Neither sky nor earth is for me.

How I love, how I loved to stare At the ironclad shores, On the balcony, where forever No foot stepped, not mine, not yours. And in truth you are -- a capital For the mad and luminous us; But when over Nieva sail Those special, pure hours And the winds of May fly over You past the iron beams You are like a dying sinner Seeing heavenly dreams...

And just how many city skylines Could have evoked my tears, But I know just one city in the world, And I can find it, blindfolded, in a dream.

The poet has to die many times, Foolish child: he himself chose this way - He couldn't bear the first outrage, He didn't know at what door he stood, He didn't understand what kind of road Would open up before him...

The earthly glory is like smoke, I wanted much more than this. In all my lovers I evoked The feelings of joy and bliss. One is still in love somewhere With a friend from long ago, The other stands in the city square,- A statue of bronze in the snow.

Only the dead smiled back in those days, Being at peace and safe from abuse.

There are such days before the spring: When meadows rest beneath the snow, And dry and cheerful branches swing When gentle warm winds blow. You marvel at your body's lightness And do not recognize your home, And sing again with new excitement The song that once seemed tiresome.

That old Cagliostro does weird things, He's a most elegant devil , But he won't cry with me over death And he doesn't know what conscience is.

And so the decades file by, torture, Deportations, executions. Sing — You see... I can't

A fairy tale from the terrible past, My double goes to the interrogation, And then comes from the interrogation

A happy phrase — "at home " — And now unknown to anyone, Everybody looks through another man's windows.

Cold clouds of incense Hide the height of the sky, A burst of wind and everything opens. We understand. The drama is over, This is not the third autumn. This is death.

Yellow and fresh are the lanterns, Black is the road of the garden at sea. I am very calm. Only please, do not Talk about him with me. You're tender and loyal, we'll be friends. . Have fun, kiss, together grow old. . And light months above us will fly like feathers, Like stars made of snow and as cold.

And if you knew from what scraps Poems are born — without shame Like yellow dandelions by a wormy fence, Like wild spinach or the common burr.

Like a white stone at the bottom of the well, One memory lies in me. I cannot and I do not want to struggle, It is both joy and suffering. I think that anyone who looks into my Eyes will all at once see him. More sad and pensive he'll become That heard the story of this suffering. I know that the gods had turned People to objects, without killing mind, That divine sadness lived eternally. You're turned into my memory, I find.

The first ray -- as the blessing of the Lord -- Across the face of the beloved did creep, Who, sleeping, went a little pale, And then again more tightly went to sleep. It seemed that warmth of ray of sun Appeared to him just like a kiss. And long with these my lips I have not touched The tan strong shoulder or the dear lips. And now, the deceased spirits in my long Disconsolate wandering along the way, I am now flying toward him as a song And I caress him with a morning ray.

Can you describe this?" And I said: "I can." Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.

Oh, how often you'll remember The sudden pain of unnamed longing — Anna Akhmatova, from "I'll erase this day from your memory," trans. A. S. Kline, White Flock (Hyperborea, 1917)

a grieved shadow hunts my body's warmth

Forgive me that I ignored the sun And that I lived in sorrow.

I always think about the past, it's so large and bright.

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