Regarding myself as a mere echo, Cave-like, unintelligible and nocturnal . . . - Anna Akhmatova

During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear — (we all spoke in whispers there):
‘Could you describe this?’
I said, ‘I can!’
Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.

I marvel at everything as if it were new.

I live like a cuckoo in a clock,
I'm not jealous of the forest birds.
They wind me up — and I cuckoo.
You know — such a fate
I could only wish
For someone I hate.