About Anna Akhmatova: Anna Andreyevna Gorenko was a Russian modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.
Son: Father, you are my father. You sired me. I have sired no one because I left the primordial. I left you, I studied, I suffered, and my visions were pure. Before me, my father, new horizons were opened. Father: Yes, I am your father. I sired you a...
The mirror's light sparks in the eyes, And horrified, my lids drawn tight, I step back to that realm of night Where not a single exit lies... (Untitled: "I pass away this life of mine...")
He asked her, 'Why do you feel sorry for me, Old Woman?' The Old Woman stood beside him and looked out the window at the Garden, so beautiful, flowering and everywhere illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, and said, 'I feel sorry for you, dear ...
There can be such a sky, and such A play of rays, that our heart feels An insult to a doll is more Piteous than an insult to oneself. ("It Happened at Vallen-Koski")
I was standing alone with him when she burst impetuously through the door, tall and wearing a rain-cape on top of a queen's costume, a forgotten crown on her head. She directed some rapid words at him. He began to tremble all over and dropped my hand...
Adam Antonovich's father was a tubby tyrant with a triple chin and chinks where his eyes should have been. All his life he had amassed money. In old age he had exchanged it for space; his estates grew, grew and swelled. ("Adam")
The squeak of oarlocks comes over the lake water A woman's shriek assaults the ear While above, in the sky, inured to everything, The moon looks on with a mindless leer ("The Unknown Lady")
Beyond the lake the waning moon has slowed, And stands there like a window open wide Into a hushed and brightly lit abode Where something dreadful has occurred inside.
Tahtahta-ha-ha' clattered the wheels. A lamp outside the window nodded to him. Another. A third. The lamps ceased to wink. Night without winking clung to the windows. ("Adam")
He returned to his seat and sat down; the road is so long, so long; he had to get through these spaces where stations clustered about the track amidst the black night like some black coffin set with candles. He thought that minute was flying after mi...
They gathered after mass, sang hymns and read. Everyone had grown even more serene; beneath the sisters' kerchiefs it was as if there were no faces. When they met Daryushka — it was as if they bowed down lower. She was walking in the Spirit. Daryus...
How beautiful the tragic seems when it is beneath a mask, but when it appears so nakedly before me and... when I am so forcibly implicated... I don't know whether I care for it so much. Somehow or other it is as though I were torturing myself. ("Thir...
I was washing outside in the darkness, the sky burning with rough stars, and the starlight, salt on an axe-blade. The cold overflows the barrel. The gate's locked, the land's grim as its conscience. I don't think they'll find the new weaving, finer t...
All my contemporaries— hundred-and-fivers or convicts— will tell you how we lived in barely sentient fear, raising children for the executioner, prison, or the torture chamber.
As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.
Why is it that you still beguile me – As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes? Why is that you smile on me – With sudden summer lightning strikes?
I've ceased to smile long ago, The bitter winds now chill my lips, Another hope was just let go, Another song was added since. Against my will, I'll cede this song To people's laughter and offense, Because love's silence for the soul Is too unbearabl...
No one else was as close and as open, No one else so boiled my blood, Even he, who consigned me to torment, Even he, who caressed and forgot.
I’m happy. But some beauty is nonesuch - The gently sloping path across the wood, The wretched bridge that’s just a little skewed And that, for which, I won’t be waiting much.
Forgive me that I felt forsaken, That grief and angst was all I knew. Forgive me that I kept mistaking Too many other men for you.
Song falls silent, music is dumb, But the air burns with their fragrance, And white winter, on its knees, Observes everything with reverent attention.
