This means that gravestones are fragile and granite is softer than wax. Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity I shall soon turn gray or change … - Anna Akhmatova

This land, although not my native land,
Will be remembered forever.
And the sea's lightly iced,
Unsalty water.

The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,
The air is heady, like wine,
And the rosy body of the pines
Is naked in the sunset hour.

And the sunset itself on such waves of ether
That I just can't comprehend
Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,
Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I answered: "Yes, I can."
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.

Native Soil

There's
Nobody simpler than us, or with
more pride, or fewer tears.
(1922)

Our hearts don't wear it as an amulet,
it doesn't sob beneath the poet's hand,
nor irritate the wounds we can't forget
in our bitter sleep. It's not the Promised Land.
Our souls don't calculate its worth
as a commodity to be sold and bought;
sick, and poor, and silent on this earth,
often we don't give it a thought.
Yes, for us it's the dirt on our galoshes,
yes, for us it's the grit between our teeth.
Dust, and we grind and crumble and crush it,
the gentle and unimplicated earth.
But we'll lie in it, become its weeds and flowers,
so unembarrassedly we call it - ours.