The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.
Anna AkhmatovaI should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.
Anna AkhmatovaI myself, from the very beginning, Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium Or a reflection in someone else's mirror, Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. Already I knew the list of crimes That I was destined to commit.
Anna AkhmatovaYou 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.
Anna Akhmatova