Though you are three times more beautiful than angels, Though you are the sister of the river willows, I will kill you with my singing, Without spilling your blood on the ground. Not touching you with my hand, Not giving you one glance, I will stop loving you, But with your unimaginable groans I will finally slake my thirst. From her, who wandered the earth before me, Crueler than ice, more fiery than flame, From her, who still exists in the ether— From her you will set me free.

Thomas; Penguin Classics; ISBN 0-14-042464-4
2009 Selected Poems Trans. She regularly read to soldiers in the military hospitals and on the front line; indeed her later pieces seem to be the voice of those who had struggled and the many Anna Akhmatova has outlived. Akhmatova was able to meet some of her pre-revolutionary acquaintances in 1965 when Anna Akhmatova was allowed to travel to Sicily and England in order to receive the Taormina prize and an honorary doctoral degree from Oxford University accompanied by her lifelong friend and secretary Lydia Chukovskaya.

Akhmatova's first husband Nikolai Gumilev was executed by the Soviet secret police and her son Lev Gumilev and her third husband Nikolay Punin spent many years in the Gulag where Punin died. Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 23 [O. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry.