Why Is This Age Worse...?

Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova, born Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, was a significant Russian poet whose work ranged from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, including her seminal long poem, Requiem. Her work often grappled with themes of love, suffering, and the trauma of living through the oppressive Soviet regime. Despite being censored and witnessing the persecution of her loved ones, she remained in Russia and became a symbolic figure of resistance and artistic integrity.

Anna Akhmatova

I Don't Know If You're Alive Or Dead

Anna Akhmatova, Simple Poetry

Sunbeam

Anna Akhmatova, Simple Poetry

Twenty-First. Night. Monday

Anna Akhmatova, Simple Poetry

Everything

Anna Akhmatova, Simple Poetry

English

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Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

March Elegy

I have enough treasures from the past
to last me longer than I need, or want.
You know as well as I . . . malevolent memory
won't let go of half of them:
a modest church, with its gold cupola
slightly askew; a harsh chorus
of crows; the whistle of a train;
a birch tree haggard in a field
as if it had just been sprung from jail;
a secret midnight conclave
of monumental Bible-oaks;
and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting out
of somebody's dreams, slowly foundering.
Winter has already loitered here,
lightly powdering these fields,
casting an impenetrable haze
that fills the world as far as the horizon.
I used to think that after we are gone
there's nothing, simply nothing at all.
Then who's that wandering by the porch
again and calling us by na...

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem

Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected -
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningr...

Anna Akhmatova

I Don't Know If You're Alive Or Dead

I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?

All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night,
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.

No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured
Me more, not
Even the one who betrayed me to torture,
Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.

Anna Akhmatova

The Death Of Autumn.

                Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
                Grey Autumn meets her fate.

                Forsaken and alone
She haunts the ruins of her queenly state,
Like banished Eve at Eden's flaming gate,
                Making perpetual moan.

                Crazed with her grief she moves
Along the banks of the frost-charmed rills,
And all the hollows of the wooded hills,
                Searching for her lost loves.

                From verdurous base to cope,
The sunny hill-sides, and sweet pasture lands,
Where bubbling brooks reach ever-dimpled hands
                Along the amber slope,--

                And valleys drowsed between,
In the ...

Kate Seymour Maclean

Under Her Dark Veil

Under her dark veil she wrung her hands.
"Why are you so pale today?"
"Because I made him drink of stinging grief
Until he got drunk on it.
How can I forget? He staggered out,
His mouth twisted in agony.
I ran down not touching the bannister

And caught up with him at the gate.
I cried: 'A joke!
That's all it was. If you leave, I'll die.'
He smiled calmly and grimly
And told me: 'Don't stand here in the wind.' "

Anna Akhmatova

How Can You Bear To Look At The Neva?

How can you bear to look at the Neva?
How can you bear to cross the bridges?.
Not in vain am I known as the grieving one
Since the time you appeared to me.
The black angels' wings are sharp,
Judgment Day is coming soon,
And raspberry-colored bonfires bloom,
Like roses, in the snow.

Anna Akhmatova