But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud.

Anna Akhmatova

Categorized in : People Clouds Blow

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

Anna Akhmatova

storm remember thinking

Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.

Anna Akhmatova

rest-of-your-life dream

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.

Anna Akhmatova

butterfly stars eye

It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.

Anna Akhmatova

painful soul

During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’ I said, ‘I can!’ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.

Anna Akhmatova

numbness blue years

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

Anna Akhmatova

enchantment pain and-love

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.

Anna Akhmatova

fire heart thinking

My shadow serves as the friend I crave

Anna Akhmatova

crave shadow

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.

Anna Akhmatova

forgive-me dream song

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

Anna Akhmatova

festivals terrible past

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

Anna Akhmatova

call-me grief insomnia

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.

Anna Akhmatova

hours eye guarantees

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

Anna Akhmatova

russia black stars

Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.

Anna Akhmatova

confused real quiet

Flowers, cold from the dew, And autumn's approaching breath, I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids, Which haven't faded yet. In their nights, fragrantly resinous, Entwined with delightful mystery, They will breathe in her springlike Extraordinary beauty. But in a whirlwind of sound and fire, From her shing head they will flutter And falland before her They will die, faintly fragrant still. And, impelled by faithful longing, My obedient gaze will feast upon them With a reverent hand, Love will gather their rotting remains.

Anna Akhmatova

autumn flower fall

Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed,

Anna Akhmatova

beloved mother stones

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

Anna Akhmatova

silence running past

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me . . . and asked me in a whisper . . . "Can you describe this?" And I said: "I can."

Anna Akhmatova

waiting-in-line one-day years

We aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the ploughed plains smoked.

Anna Akhmatova

body summer years

This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet.

Anna Akhmatova

age rivers fall