Quote

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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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
Faces
Witness
Place
Foreign
Time
Stranger
Wings
Sky
Shielded
Stand
Survivor
Face
Wing
Common
Protected

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Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief.
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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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Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.
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It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.
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As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.
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Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul, But I loved the silver willow best of all.
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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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It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.
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The triumphs of a mysterious non-meeting are desolate ones unspoken phrases, silent words.
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This Cruel Age has deflected me.
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All has been looted, betrayed, sold black death's wing flashed ahead.
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If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.
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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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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.
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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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I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.
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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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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.
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A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me.
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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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