Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was a Russian modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth23 June 1889
CountryRussian Federation
spirit lows ifs
If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.
love passion secret
There is a sacred, secret line in loving which attraction and even passion cannot cross.
stars childhood inheritance
... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood, with the bounty and vigilance of the stars, the whole world was his inheritance and he shared it with everyone.
sunset secret world
Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.
running past silence
Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.
summer eye winter
And it seemed to me that there were fires Flying till dawn without number And I never found out things-those Strange eyes of his-what colour? Everything trembling and singing and Were you my enemy or my friend, Winter was it or summer?
time sky wings
No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.
generosity remembrance each-day
We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and our former riches.
summer years body
We aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the ploughed plains smoked.
flower fall autumn
Flowers, cold from the dew, And autumn's approaching breath, I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids, Which haven't faded yet. In their nights, fragrantly resinous, Entwined with delightful mystery, They will breathe in her springlike Extraordinary beauty. But in a whirlwind of sound and fire, From her shing head they will flutter And fall—and before her They 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.
sadness lamps sticks
Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound; I could never have borne it. So take the thing that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground; whisk the lamps away.
eye guarantees hours
We learned not to meet anymore, We don't raise our eyes to one another, But we ourselves won't guarantee What could happen to us in an hour.
wings black betrayed
All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead.
night poetry ignorant
But Fear and the Muse in turn guard the place Where the banished poet has gone And the night that comes with quickened pace Is ignorant of dawn.