“Nothing I counted mine, out of my life,
is mine to take…”
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987)
Context: No use to fall down on my knees
and beg for mercy's sake.
Nothing I counted mine, out of my life,
is mine to take...
“He is no better and no worse,
but he is free of Lethe's curse:
his warm hand makes a human pledge.”
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: All the mirrors on the wall
show a man not yet appeared
who could not enter this white hall.
He is no better and no worse,
but he is free of Lethe's curse:
his warm hand makes a human pledge.
Strayed from the future, can it be
that he will really come to me,
turning left from the bridge?
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: Are the last days near, perhaps?
I have forgotten your lessons,
prattlers and false prophets,
but you haven't forgotten me.
As the future ripens in the past,
so the past rots in the future —
a terrible festival of dead leaves.
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
“This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.”
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Context: This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.
“Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.”
"Willow" (1940)
Context: Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
“I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.”
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: Dread. Bottomless dread...
I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.
As a White Stone... (1916)
Context: As a white stone in the well's cool deepness,
There lays in me one wonderful remembrance.
I am not able and don't want to miss this:
It is my torture and my utter gladness. I think, that he whose look will be directed
Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.
“Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.”
Remarks to her friend Lydia Chukovskaya (March 1956), as quoted in Joseph Stalin : A Biographical Companion (1999) by Helen Rappaport, p. 2
Context: 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.
"You will hear thunder and remember me...", translated by D. M. Thomas
There will be thunder then. Remember me.
Say 'She asked for storms.' The entire
world will turn the colour of crimson stone,
and your heart, as then, will turn to fire.
"Thunder," translated by A.S.Kline
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
“I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
“Your voice is wild and simple.
You are untranslatable
Into any one tongue.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Source: Poems of Akhmatova
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova