Anna Akhmatova

I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.

All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead.