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Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.

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
Ashtrays
Matches
Ritual
Bitter
Beautiful
Hands
Ashtray

More quotes by Anna Akhmatova

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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
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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.
Anna Akhmatova
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That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.
Anna Akhmatova
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The celebrations Of secret nonmeetings are empty, Unspoken conversations, Unuttered words. Glances that don't intersect Don't know where to come to rest. And only the tears rejoice Because they can flow and flow. Sweetbrier around Moscow, Alas! Somehow it is here ... And all this they will call Love eternal.
Anna Akhmatova
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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.
Anna Akhmatova
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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.
Anna Akhmatova
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And you know, I agree to everything: I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy, Darkness will be light and sin lovely.
Anna Akhmatova
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No, not under the vault of another sky, not under the shelter of other wings. I was with my people then, there where my people were doomed to be.
Anna Akhmatova
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Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again. Unless ... Summer's ardent rustling is like a festival outside my window.
Anna Akhmatova
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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
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There is a sacred, secret line in loving which attraction and even passion cannot cross.
Anna Akhmatova
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The secret of secrets is inside me again.
Anna Akhmatova
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No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.
Anna Akhmatova
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Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief.
Anna Akhmatova
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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.
Anna Akhmatova
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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.
Anna Akhmatova
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Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.
Anna Akhmatova
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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.
Anna Akhmatova
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If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.
Anna Akhmatova
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Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.
Anna Akhmatova