Isn't it the sea? No, it's only graveyard Pine-needles, and in a boiling of foam, Still closer,closer... Marche funèbre - Anna Akhmatova

Why is this century worse than those others? Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm, It only touched the blackest of the ulcers, But couldn't heal it in its span of time.

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I answered: "Yes, I can."
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.

I myself, from the very beginning,
Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium
Or a reflection in someone else's mirror,
Without flesh, without meaning, without a name.
Already I knew the list of crimes
That I was destined to commit.