Anna Ahkmatova

"...the tragedy finds expression in poetry that is stronger that the fact of that tragedy. It finds expression in a harmony that prevails over fate. It finds expression in the creative act that leads the way out of death’s domain."(a film for Anna Ahkmatova)

I AM BEAUTIFUL; lighting fire within the brushes, pens of musicians and artists across land. Dignified, graceful, elegant, words from the mouths of a close few whom know my presence well. I believe myself to be beautiful inside and out, a granite masterpiece tempering the harsh tides of oppression. I know to find beauty in this world, you must first find beauty in yourself.

I AM A MOTHER; holding firm to the connection made long before the womb, and tested through turmoil. I love unconditionally, irrevocably my God given blessing. I watch as he grows and is over taken by a force so much more powerful than anticipated. I will with head strong ideology and stubborn will beg for his release, back into his mother arms.

 I AM A SURVIVOR; the revolution, the great wars, the bloody reign of Stalin, and enough tragedy for even the strongest of men to endure. The death of my lovers and friends. The intellect, the knowledge lost under Communist regimes. The death I have seen will forever paint my eyelids.

I AM REVOLUTIONARY; whispers, breeze and breath through the tree of all Russia. I will forever more be the silent cries, and the immortal suffering of my people. One Hundred million voices in one. My voice, though soft, is thick with the chaos rained upon my homeland.

 I AM A POET;

"In the dreadful years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman standing behind me, blue with cold, who of course had never heard my name, woke from that trance, characteristic of us all and asked in my ear (then, everyone spoke in whispers) 'Ah, can you describe this?' And I said: I can. Then something like a tormented smile passed over what had once been her face."

-Requiem ( 1st April 1957)