Quote

Song falls silent, music is dumb, But the air burns with their fragrance, And white winter, on its knees, Observes everything with reverent attention.

Anna Akhmatova

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Anna Akhmatova
Age: 76 †
Born: 1889
Born: June 23
Died: 1966
Died: March 5
Author
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Poet
Translator
Writer
Odesa
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko
Anna Achmatova
Anna Ahmatova
Anna Gorenko
Anna Andreevna Gorenko
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
White
Fragrance
Song
Falls
Fall
Knees
Music
Dumb
Everything
Winter
Silent
Reverent
Air
Observes
Attention
Burns

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Let whoever wants to, relax in the south, And bask in the garden of paradise. Here is the essence of north—and it's autumn I've chosen as this year's friend.
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A land not mine, still forever memorable, the waters of its ocean chill and fresh. Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk, and the air drunk, like wine, late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pinetrees. Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.
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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.
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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.
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I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.
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Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.
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... 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.
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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.
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It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.
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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.
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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.
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But Fear and the Muse in turn guard the place Where the banished poet has gone And the night that comes with quickened pace Is ignorant of dawn.
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The word dropped like a stone on my still living breast. Confess: I was prepared, am somehow ready for the test.
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If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory.
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It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.
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I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.
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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.
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I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.
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Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.
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And it seemed to me that there were fires Flying till dawn without number And I never found out things-those Strange eyes of his-what colour? Everything trembling and singing and Were you my enemy or my friend, Winter was it or summer?
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