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Give me bitter years of sickness, Suffocation, insomnia, fever, Take my child and my lover, And my mysterious gift of song This I pray at your liturgy After so many tormented days, So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia Might become a cloud of glorious rays.

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
Take
Praying
Lover
Darkened
Many
Gift
Glorious
Liturgy
Giving
Days
Mysterious
Tormented
Children
Child
Bitter
Insomnia
Years
Song
Clouds
Fever
Become
Pray
Cloud
Give
Russia
Rays
Might
Lovers
Sickness
Suffocation

More quotes by 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.
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All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
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How the miracle of our meeting Shone there and sang, I didn't want to return From there to anywhere. Happiness instead of duty Was bitter delight to me. Not obliged to speak to anyone, I spoke for a long while. Let passions stifle lovers, Demanding answers, We, my dear, are only souls At the limits of the world.
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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.
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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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You do not know just what you've been forgiven.
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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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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.
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Song falls silent, music is dumb, But the air burns with their fragrance, And white winter, on its knees, Observes everything with reverent attention.
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Forgive me, that I manage badly, Manage badly but live gloriously, That I leave traces of myself in my songs, That I appeared to you in waking dreams.
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And this tenderness was not like That which a certain poet At the beginning of the century called true And, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all— It rang out, like the first waterfall, It crunched like the crust of bluish ice And it prayed with a swanlike voice, And it broke down right before our eyes.
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Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue.
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That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.
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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.
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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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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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Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.
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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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Wild honey smells of freedom The dust - of sunlight The mouth of a young girl, like a violet But gold - smells of nothing.
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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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