DEDICATION
Ahead of this punishment bend the mountains, not flows the great river, but balances the prison locks, behind them “the dens of life imprisonment”, and with anguish. For someone breathes fresh wind, for someone yearns sunset, we do not know, we are the same everywhere, we hear hateful screeching of keys, and heavy steps of soldiers. It rose like a morning Mass, we went for a capital run wild, it would meet more of inanimate dead. The sun more fade, and Nevà more hazy, but from afar always sings hope. The sentence. And immediately tears gush. Now it separated from everyone, as if from the heart with pain ripped through life, as if crudely lays her on her back, but walks. Falters. Alone. Where they are now involuntary girlfriends, my two years of hell? What they see in the Siberian blizzard, what glimpsed in the disk of the moon? To them I send my farewell.
(Anna Andreevna Achmatova)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Poems-Anna-Akhmatova/dp/0939010275