How the miracle of our meeting Shone there and sang, I didn't want to return From there to anywhere. Happiness instead of duty Was bitter delight to me. Not obliged to speak to anyone, I spoke for a long while. Let passions stifle lovers, Demanding answers, We, my dear, are only souls At the limits of the world.

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me . . . and asked me in a whisper . . . "Can you describe this?" And I said: "I can."

I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.

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

If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.

That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias.