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 startl… - Anna Akhmatova

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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...