Flowers, cold from the dew, And autumn's approaching breath, I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids, Which haven't faded yet. In their nights, fragrantly resinous, Entwined with delightful mystery, They will breathe in her springlike Extraordinary beauty. But in a whirlwind of sound and fire, From her shing head they will flutter And fall—and before her They will die, faintly fragrant still. And, impelled by faithful longing, My obedient gaze will feast upon them— With a reverent hand, Love will gather their rotting remains.

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.