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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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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
Live
Outside
Ardent
Must
Unless
Festivals
Much
Memories
Stone
Like
Turn
Stones
Turns
Memory
Learn
Summer
Today
Window
Rustling
Soul
Kill
Festival

More quotes by Anna Akhmatova

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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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If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.
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Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue.
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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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I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.
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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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Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.
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All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
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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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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.
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That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.
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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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Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief.
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You do not know just what you've been forgiven.
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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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Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.
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Natural thunder heralds the wetness of fresh water high clouds to quench the thirst of fields gone dry and parched, a messenger of blessed rain, but this was as dry as hell must be. My distraught perception refused to believe it, because of the insane suddenness with which it sounded, swelled and hit, and how casually it came to murder my child.
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Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.
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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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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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