..who honours Stalin.. don’t you think you’d better find out what the Communist terror was like? Here’s an excerpt from Anna Akhmatova’s poem Requiem.. not allowed to be published by Communism and about her husband’s execution and her son’s imprisonment ..

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.

[1939.

Spring]

VII

THE VERDICT

The word landed with a stony thud

Onto my still-beating breast.

Nevermind, I was prepared,

I will manage with the rest.

I have a lot of work to do today;

I need to slaughter memory,

Turn my living soul to stone

Then teach myself to live again.

.

.

But how.

The hot summer rustles

Like a carnival outside my window;

I have long had this premonition

Of a bright day and a deserted house.