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
passion long miracle
How the miracle of our meeting Shone there and sang, I didn't want to return From there to anywhere. Happiness instead of duty Was bitter delight to me. Not obliged to speak to anyone, I spoke for a long while. Let passions stifle lovers, Demanding answers, We, my dear, are only souls At the limits of the world.
simple voice tongue
Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue.
blow clouds people
But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud...
long house premonition
I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house
secret
The secret of secrets is inside me again
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.
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.
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.
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.
broken-heart angel night
You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I'd plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I'd ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.
recalls knows
I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.