Anna Akhmatova Quotes

The sand as white as old bones, the pine trees strangely red where the sun comes down. I cannot say if it is our love, or the day, that is ending.

Monstrously giving birth to yourself,
Admiring yourself and choking on yourself,
Are you not, alas, the only tie
Between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise?
It seems to me that you are always on the boundary.

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?

I marvel at everything as if it were new.

Forgive me that I felt forsaken,
That grief and angst was all I knew.
Forgive me that I kept mistaking
Too many other men for you.

I’m happy. But some beauty is nonesuch -
The gently sloping path across the wood,
The wretched bridge that’s just a little skewed
And that, for which, I won’t be waiting much.

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.

I know beginnings, I know endings too,
and life-in-death, and something else
I'd rather not recall just now.

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. — 1940-1943

I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body.

It's all the same to me. The Yenisei swirls, the North Star shines, as it will shine forever; and the blue lustre of my loved one's eyes is clouded over by the final horror. — The House on the Fontanka, 19 August 1939

This woman is sick to her marrow-bone, this woman is utterly alone, with husband dead, with son away in jail. Pray for me. Pray.

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.

Безвольно слабеют колени,
И кажется, нечем дышать...
Ты - солнце моих песнопений,
Ты - жизни моей благодать.

He left his soul behind and told me:
It’ll be safer by your side.