All Quotes by Anna Akhmatova
“At dawn they came and took you away. the holy candle gasped for air.”
“This woman is sick to her marrow-bone, in jail. Pray for me. Pray.”
“Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound. Night.”
“For seventeen months I have cried aloud or on what day the word spells, "Kill!"”
“The word dropped like a stone am somehow ready for the test.”
“Today I have so much to do: Is like a festival outside my window.”
“You will come in any case — so why not now? or else infect me — typhus be my lot —”
“It's all the same to me. The Yenisei swirls, — The House on the Fontanka, 19 August 1939”
“Already madness lifts its wing to cover half my soul.”
“Now everything is clear. is the tongue of a stranger.”
“No use to fall down on my knees is mine to take...”
“A choir of angels glorified the hour, Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me..."”
“Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, — 1940-1943”
“I have learned how faces fall to bone, with me under that blind red wall.”
“I've woven them a garment that's prepared for them, this eve of my remembrance day.”
“I have a lot of work to do today;”
“You will hear thunder and remember me,”
“Flowers, cold from the dew,”
“As the future ripens in the past,”
“This cruel age has deflected me,”
“I asked him then: 'What are you after?'”
“O let the organ, many-voiced, sing boldly, Will meet your eyes just once and then no more.”
“I go forth to seek — Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.”
“You thought I was that type: And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare...”
“Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul I will never come back to you.”
“I don't know if you're alive or dead. Be mourned serenely in my thought?”
“No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.”
“Why is this century worse than those others? But couldn't heal it in its span of time.”
“All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead.”
“You will hear thunder and remember me, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.”
“That day in Moscow, it will all come true, Leaving my shadow still to be with you.”
“A multi-colored crowd streaked about, It came from a strange land.”
“Natural thunder heralds the wetness of fresh water to murder my child.”
“Give me bitter years of sickness, Might become a cloud of glorious rays.”
“Now no one will listen to songs. Don't break my heart, don't ring out.”
“I am not one of those who left the land my songs are not for them to praise.”
“But here, in the murk of conflagration, straighter than you … more proud...”
“Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But I loved the silver willow best of all.”
“Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree. Mute separations, mute black, bloody events in every family. Invisible mourning worn by mothers and wives. Now the arrested are returning, and two Russias stare each other in the eyes: the ones that put them in prison and the ones who were put in prison. A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together.”
“The sand as white or the day, that is ending.”
“You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain.”
“Now you're gone, and nobody says a word at your dumb funeral feast.”
“Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.”
“And the just man trailed God's shining agent, where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."”
“Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem who suffered death because she chose to turn.”
“Thinking of the sun causes quick lightly drifting.”
“The silvery tree opens that I am not your husband.”
“Thinking of the sun makes From this night winter begins.”
“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”
“All as before: against the dining-room windows Us both to disaster."”
“You will hear thunder and remember me,”
“But lifting his dry hand Tell me how you kiss men."”
“Not a single muscle quivered That I can refuse him nothing.”
“As a white stone in the well's cool deepness, Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.”
“I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness, To make eternal the unearthly sadness.”
“I hear always the sad voices over the high grass”
“I do not need your loving words and happier.”
“We aged a hundred years, and this the body of the ploughed plains smoked.”
“We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, and — our former riches.”
“This cruel age has deflected me, I never had the chance to meet.”
“I know beginnings, I know endings too, I'd rather not recall just now.”
“The grave I go to will not be my own. I should know at last what envy is.”
“I have lit my treasured candles, though the hour has not yet struck.”
“Dread. Bottomless dread... defending my remnant peace.”
“Let the gossip roll! I am more iron than they.”
“Prince Charming, prince of the mockers — is grace incarnate...”
“That woman I once was, till the Day of Judgement.”
“Are the last days near, perhaps? a terrible festival of dead leaves.”
“All the mirrors on the wall turning left from the bridge?”
“From childhood I have been afraid had slipped among them...”
“You... You write laws of iron.”
“Creature of special tastes, that, nor anything..”
“Besides or die! But what am I trying to say?”
“In the black sky no star is seen, and sing to us about holy vengeance...”
“There is no death, each of us knows — I'll leave it to others to explain.”
“Is this the visitor from the wrong side between the stove and the cupboard?”
“This means that gravestones are fragile I would give the peace of the tomb.”
“No foreign sky protected me, — 1961”
“Such grief might make the mountain stoop, reverse the waters where they flow, but cannot burst these ponderous bolts that block us from the prison cells crowded with mortal woe...”
“Such grief might make the mountain stoop, crowded with mortal woe...”
“For some the wind can fleshly blow, to congregate, less live than dead.”
“Where are they now, my nameless friends — March 1940”
“That was a time when only the dead dangled outside its prison-house...”
“The stars of death stood over us. under the wheels of Black Marias.”