“Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless …”

— Anna Akhmatova

Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), The Sentence
Context: Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless... Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.

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Anna Akhmatova 99

Russian modernist poet 1889–1966

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