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
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.
wings black betrayed
All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead.
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.
forgiven knows
You do not know just what you've been forgiven.
tonight thread
All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
wine sunset air
This land, although not my native land, Will be remembered forever. And the sea's 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 pines Is naked in the sunset hour. And the sunset itself on such waves of ether That I just can't comprehend Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world, Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.