The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be cro… - Anna Akhmatova

In human closeness there is a secret edge,
Nor love nor passion can pass it above,
Let lips with lips be joined in silent rage,
And hearts be burst asunder with the love.

And friendship, too, is powerless plot,
And so years of bliss with noble tends,
When your heart is free and known not,
The slow languor of the earthy sense.

And they who strive to reach this edge are mad,
But they who reached are shocked with anguish hard -
Now you know why beneath your hand
You do not feel the beating of my heart.

I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
or only when the sunsets fade
be mourned secretly in my thought?

All is for you: the daily prayer,
the sleepless heat at night,
and of my verses, the white
flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.

No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured
me more, not
even the one who betrayed me to torture,
not even the one who caressed me and forgot.

You will not live again.
You will not rise from the snow
Twenty-eight holes from the bayonet
Five from the gun.

I have made a shroud for my friend,
Sad cloth.
She loves, loves blood
This Russian earth.