Anna Akhmatova Quotes

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A multi-colored crowd streaked about,
and suddenly all was totally changed.
It wasn't the usual city racket.
It came from a strange land.

Anna Akhmatova
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
Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.
Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing.

Anna Akhmatova
Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.

Anna Akhmatova
I have learned how faces fall to bone,
how under the eyelids terror lurks,
how suffering inscribes on cheeks
the hard lines of its cuneiform texts,
how glossy black or ash-fair locks
turn overnight to tarnished silver,
how smiles fade on submissive lips,
and fear quavers in a dry titter.
And I pray not for myself alone..
for all who stood outside the jail,
in bitter cold or summer's blaze,
with me under that blind red wall.

Anna Akhmatova
I do not need your loving words
or hurried kiss
as night comes down
in the place where we once lived
innocent as children,
and happier.

Anna Akhmatova
The sand as white
as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.
I cannot say if it is our love,
or the day, that is ending.

Anna Akhmatova
In the black sky no star is seen,
somewhere in ambush lurks the Angel of Death,
but the spices tongues of the masqueraders
are loose and shameless
A shout:
"Make way for the hero!"
Ah yes. Displacing the tall one,
he will step forth now without fail
and sing to us about holy vengeance...

Anna Akhmatova
Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed,
His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared.
His mother stood apart. No other looked
into her secret eyes. Nobody dared.
— 1940-1943

Anna Akhmatova
Dread. Bottomless dread...
I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.

Anna Akhmatova
If you can't give me love and peace,
Then give me bitter fame.

Anna Akhmatova
Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.
And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.

Anna Akhmatova
He is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood, with the bounty and vigilance of the stars, the whole world was his inheritance and he shared it with everyone.

Anna Akhmatova
As a white stone in the well's cool deepness,
There lays in me one wonderful remembrance.
I am not able and don't want to miss this:
It is my torture and my utter gladness. I think, that he whose look will be directed
Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.

Anna Akhmatova
Besides
what have poets, in any case, to do with sin?
They must dance before the Ark of the Covenant
or die! But what am I trying to say?

Anna Akhmatova
Thinking of the sun causes quick
beating of my heart —
snowy weather comes on the wind
lightly drifting.

Anna Akhmatova
Creature of special tastes,
you do not wait for gout and fame
to elevate you
to a luxurious jubilee chair,
but bear your triumph
over the flowering heather,
over wildernesses.
And you are guilty of nothing: neither of this,
that, nor anything..

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

Anna Akhmatova
Now no one will listen to songs.
The prophesied days have begun.
Latest poem of mine, the world has lost its
wonder,
Don't break my heart, don't ring out.

Anna Akhmatova
Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound.
I could never have borne it. So take the thing
that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground.
Whisk the lamps away...
Night.

Anna Akhmatova
The word dropped like a stone
on my still living breast.
Confess: I was prepared,
am somehow ready for the test.

Anna Akhmatova
Today I have much work to do:
I must finally kill my memory,
I must, so my soul can turn to stone,
I must learn to live again.

Anna Akhmatova
The silvery tree opens
to an empty sky —
maybe it is better
that I am not your husband.

Anna Akhmatova
I'd like to name the names of all that host
but they snatched up the list and now it's lost.
I've woven them a garment that's prepared
out of poor words, those that I overheard,
and will hold fast to every word and glance
all of my days, even in new mischance.

Anna Akhmatova
We thought: we're poor, we have nothing,
but when we started losing one after the other
so each day became
remembrance day,
we started composing poems
about God's great generosity
and — our former riches.

Anna Akhmatova