Anna Akhmatova Poems: Biographic Collection of Love, Loss & Politics

Among many female poets from twentieth-century Russia, Anna Akhmatova has established herself as one of the greatest poets and prophets. Anna played numerous roles in her life, at first she was compared with Sappho because of her exquisitely beautiful love poem, then with Cassandra for being the prophetess of doom. Earlier, when I introduced you to the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, I explained how Russian women keenly participated in the social and political life of their country but how only a few of them equaled their male peers in the artistic world. In this list of great women who not only challenged their male peers but also society through their intellect, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva made their place through exceptional poetry, and Natalya Goncharova and Alexandra Exter, two of the other female intellects, painted magnificent abstract works. Today, I am introducing you to the poems of Anna Akhmatova that will not only fill your brains and hearts with enthusiasm, turmoil, and sentiment but will also explain the feminine response to the dramatic events that occurred in Russia. Collectively, Anna Akhmatova Poems are not only the biography of the poet herself but also a story of the Russian intelligentsia that struggled for survival in the 20th century, who loved their country so much that they stayed despite the terror and fear from politics and instability.

Table of Contents

The Poems of Anna Akhmatova.

The poems of the artist show the reality of a Russian aristocrat who was in love with her country. It is the story of a woman who reacted strongly to the revolution and terrors, suffering from the horrors of war, and loneliness of exile, finally confronting her death at old age. There is a sense of feelings and thoughts in her poems that marked a radical break with the ornate style and mystical themes of the period. With simple speech in her poems as if they reflect the way we actually think, there are images of emotional and psychological associations attached to the everyday objects. There is simplicity, clarity, and deep gesture in every single word of her poems that resemble the works of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, whom Anna admired excessively in her life. Further, there is the presence of the wisdom of her Tatar ancestors, with solace and mysticism of the Russian Orthodox Church in her poems, making them a thorough review of the World culture.

Portrait of Anna Akhmatova | Source: M.Nappelbaum, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Read 10 of the Crucial Anna Akhmatova Poems.

1. Now No One Will Be Listening To Songs.

The poem speaks with hopelessness as she expresses a sense of loss and despair due to the societal upheaval. Projecting the absence of songs and miracles; the poem symbolizes the end of everything, as the world was marked by hardship and suffering. The poet wants to keep the last song to herself as she doesn’t want to lose the pleasure of listening to them. She willfully contrasts two situations – the beautiful world, which had the love and sensibility of music, and a world marked by hardship and suffering.

The second stanza reflects the oppressive atmosphere under political repression that silences artistic expression. Having a more direct and less allusiveness in the poem, there is urgency and desperation with the use of simple language to convey the poet’s emotional state. Another comparison of the poet’s early successful career with her after state through the term “hungry beggar woman” is quite desolating, emphasizing vulnerability.

Now no-one will be listening to songs.
The days long prophesied have come to pass.
The world has no more miracles. Don’t break
My heart, song, but be still: you are the last.

Not long ago you took your morning flight
With all a swallow’s free accomplishment.
Now that you are a hungry beggar-woman,
Don’t go knocking at the stranger’s gate.
Anna Akhmatova

2. I Saw My Friend At The Front Door.

The poem begins with meeting a friend at the front door but explores the themes of loss and separation over time. Capturing a moment of farewell of the friend, the poet uses the word ‘momentous sounds’ to contrast it with the fast-moving time and inevitability of changes. The next line consists of an exclamation, “Tossed” which conveys a sense of uncertainty as if the poet questions her identity concerning her friend. The poem consists of the imagery of the future, where the speaker confronts her loss and changes from the past. The narration is sad as it explores the themes of love, loss, friendship, and regret. Aligning with the modernist movement, there is a use of symbolism with the exploration of the complexities of human relationships.

I saw my friend to the front door
I stood in the golden dust.
Momentous sounds issued
From the little belfry close by.
Tossed! Such a made-up word—
What am I, a flower or a letter?
But my eyes already gaze grimly
Into the darkened looking glass.
Anna Akhmatova

3. In Dream.

The poet explains the grief of separation from her lover that he feels too. This distance is explained by the term “black” and the question, “Why weep?.” There is an impossibility explored in this poem of togetherness as the two lovers are like the high mountains which can stand together but can’t come closer to each other. The poet further expresses a way to communicate- giving a message through a star at midnight. The poem is beautifully tragic, with a hope to love even at a distance, a common theme explored by several poets. There is an impossible union of two lovers, but there will be support and love always despite knowing the distance.

Black and enduring separation
I share equally with you.
Why weep? Give me your hand,
Promise me you will come again.
You and I are like high
Mountains and we can’t move closer.
Just send me word
At midnight sometime through the stars.
Anna Akhmatova

4. In Human Closeness There.

The poem explores the theme of contradiction in human intimacy. In the beginning, the speaker suggests that there is an uncrossable boundary in human relationships, which love or passion can never cross. She then explains the intensity of this human closeness with the reunion of lovers’ lips with a rage that their hearts burst apart with the love. But there is a friendship that the poet remarks ‘powerless plot,’ and even with so many years of happiness and bliss, the free soul inside you can feel the slow death of the sensual pleasure. When this boundary is crossed or strived to cross, the lovers are demented, and those who are closer to this boundary are stricken with sadness. The poem, written in a controlled style, is straightforward and creates a sense of movement and emotional intensity. It shows the darker side of human relationships, which is explored by most people. In addition to this, there is disillusionment and despair that connect with Russian society after the revolution.

In human closeness there is a secret edge,
Nor love nor passion can pass it above,
Let lips with lips be joined in silent rage,
And hearts be burst asunder with the love.

And friendship, too, is powerless plot,
And so years of bliss with noble tends,
When your heart is free and known not,
The slow languor of the earthy sense.

And they who strive to reach this edge are mad,
But they who reached are shocked with anguish hard —
Now you know why beneath your hand
You do not feel the beating of my heart.
Anna Akhmatova

5. Departure.

Departure shows a moment of reflection and uncertainty in the poet’s mind as she is prepared to leave a foreign land. Anna describes the surroundings of this land with the cold sea, white sand, and red pine trees, further creating a sense of sensory immersion. There is a sense of resignation and bittersweet acceptance in the poet’s departure from this land. In the end, she leaves the reader to interpret whether this land is the ending day, exile, or love. Comparative to other Anna Akhmatova poems, departure doesn’t have any political theme, thereby, focussing on personal emotion and experiences.

Although this land is not my own,
I will remember its inland sea
and the waters that are so cold
the sand as white
as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.

I cannot say if it is our love,
or the day, that is ending.
Anna Akhmatova

6. I Don’t Like Flowers.

“I Don’t Like Flowers” invokes loss and remembrance inside the reader as the poet willfully rejects the use of flowers for its superficial associations with joy and celebration or funerals and sometimes the dinners call. Associating them with life’s transitions, the poet says, ‘I Don’t Like Flowers.’ In contrast to these flowers, which are a remembrance of a particular event, she cherishes a simple rose that has been a symbol of timeless beauty while providing an enduring solace to her since childhood.

The poem is about the harsh reality of memories coming back through flowers. She refers to Mozart’s music to further emphasize the universality of art that transcends into time and experience boundaries. There is a possibility that the poet rejected the conventional symbols of joy or funeral because of the weariness caused in the Post-Revolutionary era of Russia.

I don’t like flowers – they do remind me often
Of funerals, of weddings and of balls;
Their presence on tables for a dinner calls.

But sub-eternal roses’ ever simple charm
Which was my solace when I was a child,
Has stayed – my heritage – a set of years behind,
Like Mozart’s ever-living music’s hum.
Anna Akhmatova

7. He Did Love.

The poem is about the speaker’s bitter nature towards her husband, because of his specific and unusual preferences toward more conventional taste. She highlights the fundamental incompatibility between the couple. Her husband has a love for “albino peacocks” and “worn, weathered maps of America,” which shows his detached nature toward basic intimacy with his family. The revelation at the end of the poem that the poet is his wife highlights sarcasm and emotional distance between the couple. This poem is simple but has a powerful punch with the themes of isolation and the search for a meaningful relationship in the world. In fact, the poem invites the reader to introspect their personal lives as well.

He did love three things in this world:
Choir chants at vespers, albino peacocks,
And worn, weathered maps of America.
And he did not love children crying,
Or tea served with raspberries,
Or woman’s hysteria.
…And I was his wife.
Anna Akhmatova

8. How Many Demands.

The poem is about the contrasting perspectives of the speaker and society on the silencing of women. Defining societal expectations with her own desires, the poet simply asks, “How many the demands can make!/The woman, none.”

The speaker finds solace in nature despite the demands made upon her. The poet finds solace in nature, where the ice is motionless regardless of all the demands made upon her. And, she requests to protect her written letters for the next generation so that they know the injustice she endured. The poem further ends with a plea for her memory to be remembered despite her sufferings as she uses the term “smile sadly” for children as they read her poems.

How many demands the beloved can make!
The woman discarded, none.
How glad I am that today the water
Under the colorless ice is motionless.

And I stand — Christ help me! —
On this shroud that is brittle and bright,
But save my letters
So that our descendants can decide,

So that you, courageous and wise,
Will be seen by them with greater clarity.
Perhaps we may leave some gaps
In your glorious biography?

Too sweet is earthly drink,
Too tight the nets of love.
Sometime let the children read
My name in their lesson book,
And on learning the sad story,
Let them smile shyly. . .
Since you’ve given me neither love nor peace
Grant me bitter glory.
Anna Akhmatova

9. Requiem.

Requiem is a set of poems, which was written by the poet to portray the personal shatter due to a threatened death of a loved one and an unjust arrest. Though the work portrays both private and public dimensions; it is a first-person work that arises from an individual’s experience and perception. Requiem is not a single poem but a set of poems that shows the sufferings of the poet.

The poems 5 and 6 are direct addresses from the narrator-mother to a son who is in prison. Poems 2, 3, and 4 show an emotionally dissociated narrator alternating between viewing herself as “I” and “Not I have.” A counterpart in poems 7, 8, and 9 shows the narrator in contemplation of her escape from her own consciousness. Poems 8 and 9 further explore the themes of death and madness.

“Instead of a Foreword” and “Dedication” are explicitly powerful parts of the poem that begin with the spirit of communal harmony, an ideal characteristic of Russian Orthodox worship. The poem Requiem affects the reader so powerfully that there is an intense and almost overwhelming emotion through the force of words. The poem further freezes time in one place to hold a memory forever.

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. Leningrad]

DEDICATION

Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don’t know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We’d meet – the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?
What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard?
What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon?
I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.
[March 1940]

INTRODUCTION
[PRELUDE]

It happened like this when only the dead
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its prisons
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang
Short songs of farewell
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along –
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.

I

You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your brow – I will never forget this; I will gather

To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)
Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]

II

Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.

III

It isn’t me, someone else is suffering. I couldn’t.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.

IV

Giggling, poking fun, everyone’s darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2)
If only you could have foreseen
What life would do with you –
That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in
line,
Burning the new year’s ice
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways
With not a sound – how many innocent
Blameless lives are being taken away. . .
[1938]

V

For seventeen months I have been screaming,
Calling you home.
I’ve thrown myself at the feet of butchers
For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever –
I can no longer distinguish
Who is an animal, who a person, and how long
The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers,
The chinking of the thurible,
Tracks from somewhere into nowhere
And, staring me in the face
And threatening me with swift annihilation,
An enormous star.
[1939]

VI

Weeks fly lightly by. Even so,
I cannot understand what has arisen,
How, my son, into your prison
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the talk
Is again of death.
Anna Akhmatova

10. Poem Without a Hero.

The Poem Without a Hero is a collection of poems that is one of the most significant and ambitious works of Anna Akhmatova. The work has been written over a span of more than two decades, between 1940 and 1965, a time in Russia when it witnessed turmoil and transformation of its people amidst war, revolution, and dictatorship. Being a personal and historical testament, it is one of the finest political works by the poet. It has three parts- The Year Nineteen Thirteen, A Dream, and Epilogue. Having each section woven together through memories, dreams, and reflections, there is an overlap of temporalities and perspectives. This book is the entire collection of this poem.

Final Words.

The best Anna Akhmatova poems are revolutionary not because they have too much pain and suffering from the Stalin terror but because they have simplicity in them through lyrical verses portraying the themes of loss, love, and even terror. Among all his poems, I found Requiem most touching as it shows the burden of constant awareness of the poet’s son’s ordeal. It is tempted to escape as if she is writing to forget her pain!

Resources.

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