Anna Akhmatova Quotes

And you, my friends! So few of you remain
That you are dearer daily. I rejoice
In you. How short the road has become,
That once appeared the longest road of all.

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. — 1961

Autumn, whispering through the maples,
Pleaded: 'Die here with me!

I have learned how faces fall to bone, how under the eyelids terror lurks, how suffering inscribes on cheeks the hard lines of its cuneiform texts, how glossy black or ash-fair locks turn overnight to tarnished silver, how smiles fade on submissive lips, and fear quavers in a dry titter. And I pray not for myself alone.. for all who stood outside the jail, in bitter cold or summer's blaze, with me under that blind red wall.

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

Wild honey smells of freedom
The dust - of sunlight
The mouth of a young girl, like a violet
But gold - smells of nothing.

Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.

As a white stone in the well's cool deepness, There lays in me one wonderful remembrance. I am not able and don't want to miss this: It is my torture and my utter gladness. I think, that he whose look will be directed Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.

No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured Me more, not Even the one who betrayed me to torture, Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.

You will not live again.
You will not rise from the snow
Twenty-eight holes from the bayonet
Five from the gun.

I have made a shroud for my friend,
Sad cloth.
She loves, loves blood
This Russian earth.

Let my heiress have full rights,
Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.
Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,
How the tortured breast craves air.
The love of my friends, my enemies' rancor
And the yellow roses in my bushy garden,
And a lover's burning tenderness—all this
I bestow upon you, messenger of dawn.
Also the glory for which I was born,
For which my star, like some whirlwind, soared
And now falls. Look, its falling
Prophesies your power, love and inspiration.
Preserving my generous bequest,
You will live long and worthily.
Thus it will be. You see, I am content,
Be happy, but remember me.

Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.

Now prisoners will come back home, and two Russias will look each other in the eye,
the one that put in prison and
the one that was put in prison.

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.

Don’t kiss me, I am weary -
Death will kiss me.