You will hear thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms.

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

All that I am hangs by a thread tonight

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.

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.

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.