“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.”

I am not one of those who left the land..." (1922), translated in Poems of Akhmatova (1973) by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward

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Anna Akhmatova 99
Russian modernist poet 1889–1966

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