Give me bitter years of sickness, Suffocation, insomnia, fever, Take my child and my lover, And my mysterious gift of song This I pray at your liturgy After so many tormented days, So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia Might become a cloud of glorious rays.

If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory.

As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.

Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.

I 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.

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