“Such grief might make the mountain stoop,
reverse the waters where they flow,
but cannot burst these ponderous bolts
that block us from the prison cells
crowded with mortal woe…”

— Anna Akhmatova

The mountains bow before this anguish,
The great river does not flow.
In mortal sadness the convicts languish;
The bolts stay frozen.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Dedication

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Anna Akhmatova 99

Russian modernist poet 1889–1966

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