I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise. - 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.

But I am not allowed to forget
The taste of the tears of yesterday.

Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again —