62 quotes
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless ... Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
Dread. Bottomless dread...
I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Prince Charming, prince of the mockers —
compared with him the foulest of sinners
is grace incarnate...
Poem without a Hero (1963)
At dawn they came and took you away.
You were my dead: I walked behind.
In the dark room children cried,
the holy candle gasped for air.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured
Me more, not
Even the one who betrayed me to torture,
Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.
I Don't Know If You're Alive Or Dead (1915)
I hear always the sad voices
of summer
passing like red winged birds
over the high grass
Red Winged Birds (1917)
And I pray not for myself alone..
for all who stood outside the jail,
in bitter cold or summer's blaze,
with me under that blind red wall.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
Willow (1940)
The word dropped like a stone
on my still living breast.
Confess: I was prepared,
am somehow ready for the test.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
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.
White Flock (1917)
This woman is sick to her marrow-bone,
this woman is utterly alone,
with husband dead, with son away
in jail. Pray for me. Pray.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
Now everything is clear.
I admit my defeat. The tongue
of my ravings in my ear
is the tongue of a stranger.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
That was a time when only the dead
could smile, delivered from their wars,
and the sign, the soul, of Leningrad
dangled outside its prison-house...
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
Such grief might make the mountain stoop, reverse the waters where they flow, but cannot burst these ponderous bolts that block us from the prison cells crowded with mortal woe...
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
As a white stone in the well's cool deepness,
There lays in me one wonderful remembrance.
I am not able and don't want to miss this:
It is my torture and my utter gladness. I think, that he whose look will be directed
Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.
As a White Stone (1916)
No use to fall down on my knees
and beg for mercy's sake.
Nothing I counted mine, out of my life,
is mine to take...
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness,
Men into things, not killing humane senses.
You've been turned in to my reminiscences
To make eternal the unearthly sadness.
As a White Stone (1916)
I've woven them a garment that's prepared
out of poor words, those that I overheard, and will hold fast to every word and glance
all of my days, even in new mischance,
and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth,
through which a hundred million people shout,
then let them pray for me, as I do pray
for them, this eve of my remembrance day.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)
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...
Night.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963)