I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.

Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.

Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.

It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.

The secret of secrets is inside me again.

During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’ I said, ‘I can!’ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.

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.