Anna Akhmatova

Wild honey smells of freedom The dust - of sunlight The mouth of a young girl, like a violet But gold -…

— Anna Akhmatova

Song falls silent, music is dumb, But the air burns with their fragrance, And white winter, on its knees, Observes everything with…

— Anna Akhmatova

“That is why we love this city – Dark and stern, and full of water, And we love our separations, And brief…

— Anna Akhmatova

Give me bitter years of sickness, Suffocation, insomnia, fever, Take my child and my lover, And my mysterious gift of song This…

— Anna Akhmatova

Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles…

— Anna Akhmatova

We learned not to meet anymore, We don't raise our eyes to one another, But we ourselves won't guarantee What could happen…

— Anna Akhmatova

“ In Dream Black and enduring separation I share equally with you. Why weep? Gove me your hand, promise me you will…

— Anna Akhmatova

“But don’t raise your eyes in defiance, Protect my life, my dear. They’re brighter than first violets, But deadly to me, I…

— Anna Akhmatova

Forgive me, that I manage badly, Manage badly but live gloriously, That I leave traces of myself in my songs, That I…

— Anna Akhmatova

Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.

— Anna Akhmatova

We aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the…

— Anna Akhmatova

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

— Anna Akhmatova

But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from…

— Anna Akhmatova

“Let my heiress have full rights, Live in my house, sing songs that I composed. Yet how slowly my strength ebbs, How…

— Anna Akhmatova

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

— Anna Akhmatova

“I don't know if you're alive or dead. Can you on earth be sought, or only when the sunsets fade be mourned…

— Anna Akhmatova

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will…

— Anna Akhmatova

And this tenderness was not like That which a certain poet At the beginning of the century called true And, for some…

— Anna Akhmatova

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

— Anna Akhmatova

Though you are three times more beautiful than angels, Though you are the sister of the river willows, I will kill you…

— Anna Akhmatova

A loss, but who still mourns the breath of one woman, or laments one wife? Though my heart never can forget, how,…

— Anna Akhmatova

How the miracle of our meeting Shone there and sang, I didn't want to return From there to anywhere. Happiness instead of…

— Anna Akhmatova

During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’…

— Anna Akhmatova

“It is good here: rustle and snow-crunch... Ski tracks on the splendid finery of the snow; a memory that long ages ago…

— Anna Akhmatova

I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my…

— Anna Akhmatova