Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was a Russian modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth23 June 1889
CountryRussian Federation
summer years body
We aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the ploughed plains smoked.
generosity remembrance each-day
We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and our former riches.
fall rivers age
This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet.
summer eye winter
And it seemed to me that there were fires Flying till dawn without number And I never found out things-those Strange eyes of his-what colour? Everything trembling and singing and Were you my enemy or my friend, Winter was it or summer?
time sky wings
No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.
song children insomnia
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.
running past silence
Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.
giving bitter glory
If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory.
secret
The secret of secrets is inside me again
spirit lows ifs
If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.
sunset secret world
Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.
ocean memorable wine
A land not mine, still forever memorable, the waters of its ocean chill and fresh. Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk, and the air drunk, like wine, late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pinetrees. Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.
eye guarantees hours
We learned not to meet anymore, We don't raise our eyes to one another, But we ourselves won't guarantee What could happen to us in an hour.
long house premonition
I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house