Безвольно слабеют колени, И кажется, нечем дышать... Ты - солнце моих песнопений, Ты - жизни моей благодать. - Anna Akhmatova

Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree. Mute separations, mute black, bloody events in every family. Invisible mourning worn by mothers and wives. Now the arrested are returning, and two Russias stare each other in the eyes: the ones that put them in prison and the ones who were put in prison. A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place. — 1961

You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain.