... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood, with the bounty and vigilance of the stars, the whole world was his inheritance and he shared it with everyone.
Anna AkhmatovaI know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.
Anna AkhmatovaDuring the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone โidentifiedโ 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 earโ(we all spoke in whispers there): โCould you describe this?โ I said, โI can!โ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.
Anna Akhmatova