Quotes by Anna Akhmatova

“All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black deaths wing flashed ahead.”

Flowers, cold from the dew,And autumns approaching breath,I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,Which havent faded yet.In their nights, fragrantly resinous,Entwined with delightful mystery,They will breathe in her springlikeExtraordinary beauty.But in a whirlwind of sound and fire,From her shing head they will flutterAnd fall—and before herThey will die, faintly fragrant still.And, impelled by faithful longing,My obedient gaze will feast upon them—With a reverent hand,Love will gather their rotting remains.

Let my heiress have full rights,Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,How the tortured breast craves air.The love of my friends, my enemies rancorAnd the yellow roses in my bushy garden,And a lovers burning tenderness—all thisI bestow upon you, messenger of dawn.Also the glory for which I was born,For which my star, like some whirlwind, soaredAnd now falls. Look, its fallingProphesies your power, love and inspiration.Preserving my generous bequest,You will live long and worthily.Thus it will be. You see, I am content,Be happy, but remember me.

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

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,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles Ive missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet.

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.

My shadow serves as the friend I crave.

Without love, Im more at ease, Im sure. The sky is high, the mountain wind is sweeping, And all my thoughts are innocent and pure.

I marvel at everything as if it were new.

If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.

And in the depths of music, I didn’t find the answer,And again there was silence, and again the ghost of summer.

I know: yes, no, even I must tear offThe delicate daisy petals.Everyone on earth is destined to feelThe torments of love.

For this gloomy beast within my breast - A heart. But the thing is,Weve all had to learn not to sleep for three years.In the morning we shall find outWho has died in the night.

I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.

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.

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 not weeping, I’m not complaining,Happiness is not for me.

Alls taken away: my love and my power.The body, thrown into city it hates,Finds no joy in the sunlight. With every hourThe blood grows colder in my veins.

This land, although not my native land,Will be remembered forever.And the seas lightly iced,Unsalty water.The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,The air is heady, like wine,And the rosy body of the pinesIs naked in the sunset hour.And the sunset itself on such waves of etherThat I just cant comprehendWhether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.