62 quotes
O let the organ, many-voiced, sing boldly,
O let it roar like spring's first thunderstorm!
My half-closed eyes over your young bride's shoulder
Will meet your eyes just once and then no more.
Now no one will listen to songs.
The prophesied days have begun.
Latest poem of mine, the world has lost its
wonder,
Don't break my heart, don't ring out.
From childhood I have been afraid
of mummers. It always seemed
an extra shadow
without face or name
had slipped among them...
Poem without a Hero (1963)
The grave I go to will not be my own.
But if I could step outside myself
and contemplate the person that I am,
I should know at last what envy is.
This Cruel Age has deflected me (1944)
This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
This Cruel Age has deflected me (1944)
I am not one of those who left the land
to the mercy of its enemies.
Their flattery leaves me cold,
my songs are not for them to praise.
I am not one of those who left the land (1922)
The stars of death stood over us.
And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed
under the crunch of bloodstained boots,
under the wheels of Black Marias.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
I do not need your loving words
or hurried kiss
as night comes down
in the place where we once lived
innocent as children,
and happier.
Red Winged Birds (1917)
Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.
Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing.
The Guest (1914)
I know beginnings, I know endings too,
and life-in-death, and something else
I'd rather not recall just now.
This Cruel Age has deflected me (1944)
Already madness lifts its wing
to cover half my soul.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
You...
you are as old as the Mamre oak,
ancient interrogator of the moon,
whose feigned groans cannot take us in.
You write laws of iron.
Poem without a Hero (1963)
But lifting his dry hand
He lightly touched the flowers:
"Tell me how men kiss you,
Tell me how you kiss men."
The Guest (1914)
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
A multi-colored crowd streaked about,
and suddenly all was totally changed.
It wasn't the usual city racket.
It came from a strange land.
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 icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.
Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
A choir of angels glorified the hour,
the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire.
"Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?
Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me..."
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
That woman I once was,
in a black agate necklace,
I do not wish to meet again
till the Day of Judgement.
Poem without a Hero (1963)
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.
This Cruel Age has deflected me (1944)