Quotes from Anna Akhmatova

I will quietly in the churchyard Sleep on wooden boards in the sun, On the Sunday as guest to mother You will come, my dear one -- Through the river over the mountain Can't catch up to grown ones From afar, the sharp-eyed fellow, This my cross you'll recognize. I know, dear one, very little Can you now recall of me: Did not scold you, did not fawn you, Did not hold the cup to thee.

If you were a star, I would gaze by the window till dawn

With pride your spirit is darkened For this you won't know the world at all. You say that this faith is a dream And mirage is this capital. You say that my country is sinful, Your country is godless, I scream. May the guilt still lie upon us -- We can correct and redeem. Around you are water and flowers Why seek a beggar and sinner, my dear? I know that you're sick very badly: You seek death and the end you fear.

With pride your spirit is darkened For this you won't know world at all. You say that this faith is a dream And mirage is this capital. You say that my country is sinful, Your country is godless, I scream. May the guilt still lie upon us -- We can correct and redeem. Around you are water and flowers Why seek a beggar and sinner, my dear? I know that you're sick very badly: You seek death and the end you fear.

The early chills are most pleasant to me. Torment releases me when I come there. Mysterious, dark places of habitation -- Are storehouses of labor and prayer. The calm and confident loving I can't surmount in this side of mine: A drop of Novgorod blood inside me Is like a piece of ice in foamy wine. And this can not in any way be corrected, She has not been melted by great heat, And what ever I began to glory -- You, quiet one, shine before me yet.

I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.

A loss, but who still mourns the breath of one woman, or laments one wife? Though my heart never can forget, how, for one look, she gave up her life.

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

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

You will hear thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms...

If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.

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.

Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.

I seem to myself, as in a dream, An accidental guest in this dreadful body.

Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief.

My shadow serves as the friend I crave.

I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.

Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue.

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

I myself, from the very beginning, Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium Or a reflection in someone else's mirror, Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. Already I knew the list of crimes That I was destined to commit.

The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We've always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

Forgive me, that I manage badly, Manage badly but live gloriously, That I leave traces of myself in my songs, That I appeared to you in waking dreams.

The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast. Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest. I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again. . . But how. The hot summer rustles Like a carnival outside my window; I have long had this premonition Of a bright day and a deserted house.