You’re the sinner, seeing the heavenly, Sweetest dream, before passing away… - Anna Akhmatova

For this gloomy beast within my breast -
A heart. But the thing is,
We've all had to learn not to sleep for three years.
In the morning we shall find out
Who has died in the night.

A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me..."

All's ringing, roaring, grinding, breakers' crash -
and silence all at once, release:
it means he is tiptoeing over pine needles,
so as not to startle the light sleep of space.

And it means he is counting the grains
in the blasted ears; it means
he has come again to the Daryal Gorge,
accursed and black, from another funeral.

And again Moscow, where the heart's fever burns.
Far off the deadly sleighbell chimes,
someone is lost two steps from home
in waist-high snow. The worst of times...