Anna Akhmatova quotes

All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead. (Anna Akhmatova)
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Give me bitter years of sickness, Suffocation, insomnia, fever, Take my child and my lover, And my mysterious gift of song This I pray at your liturgy After so many tormented days, So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia Might become a cloud of glorious rays. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
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. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
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. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and - our former riches. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound; I could never have borne it. So take the thing that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground; whisk the lamps away. View quote
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. (Anna Akhmatova)
We learned not to meet anymore, We don't raise our eyes to one another, But we ourselves won't guarantee What could happen to us in an hour. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
The word dropped like a stone on my still living breast. Confess: I was prepared, am somehow ready for the test. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: "she wanted storms. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
I go forth to seek - To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Natural thunder heralds the wetness of fresh water high clouds to quench the thirst of fields gone dry and parched, a messenger of blessed rain, but this was as dry as hell must be. My distraught perception refused to believe it, because of the insane suddenness with which it sounded, swelled and hit, and how casually it came to murder my child. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
I hear always the sad voices of summer passing like red winged birds over the high grass. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared. His mother stood apart. No other looked into her secret eyes. Nobody dared. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
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. (Anna Akhmatova)
I don't know if you're alive or dead. Can you on earth be sought, Or only when the sunsets fade Be mourned serenely in my thought? View quote
Anna Akhmatova
I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Besides what have poets, in any case, to do with sin? They must dance before the Ark of the Covenant or die! But what am I trying to say? View quote
Anna Akhmatova