Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Forty-Five Poems
Including ‘Requiem’
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Contents
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From: Anno Domini ................................................................................. 36
‘Everything’s looted, betrayed and traded,’ ............................................ 36
Bezhetsk ................................................................................................... 37
Lot’s Wife ................................................................................................ 38
From: Reed ............................................................................................... 39
Muse ......................................................................................................... 39
To An Artist ............................................................................................. 40
The Last Toast.......................................................................................... 41
Voronezh .................................................................................................. 42
Cleopatra .................................................................................................. 43
From: The Seventh Book .......................................................................... 44
Shade ........................................................................................................ 44
‘The souls of those I love are on high stars.’ ........................................... 45
Two Poems ............................................................................................... 46
Thunder .................................................................................................... 48
Requiem .................................................................................................... 49
Instead of a Preface .................................................................................. 49
Dedication ................................................................................................ 50
Prologue ................................................................................................... 51
1. ............................................................................................................... 52
2. ............................................................................................................... 53
3. ............................................................................................................... 54
4. ............................................................................................................... 55
5 ................................................................................................................ 56
6. ............................................................................................................... 57
7. The Sentencing..................................................................................... 58
8. To Death ............................................................................................... 59
9. ............................................................................................................... 60
10. Crucifixion. ........................................................................................ 61
Epilogue ................................................................................................... 62
Index by First Line ................................................................................... 64
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From: Evening
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Reading Hamlet
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‘Hands clasped under the dark veil.’
7
‘Memory of sun ebbs from the heart.’
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‘A grey cloud in the sky overhead,’
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Song of the Last Meeting
10
‘I’ve written down the words’
11
‘I came here, in idleness.’
12
White Night
13
Evening Room
14
Legend on An Unfinished Portrait
15
‘He loved three things, alive:’
16
From: Rosary
A Ride
17
‘I won’t beg for your love.’
18
Evening
19
‘Here we’re all drunkards and whores,’
20
‘…And no-one came to meet me’
21
‘Always so many pleas from a lover!’
22
‘The high vault’s bluer’
23
For M. Lozinsky
24
Memory’s Voice
For O. A. Glebova-Sudeikina
25
8th November 1913
26
The Guest
27
For Alexander Blok
28
From: White Flock
Solitude
29
‘There’s a secret border in human closeness,’
30
‘Like one betrothed I receive’
31
Flight
For O. A. Kuzmin-Karavaev
32
33
‘I don’t know if you’re alive or dead –’
34
‘Like a white stone in a well’s depths,’
35
From: Anno Domini
36
Bezhetsk
37
Lot’s Wife
38
From: Reed
Muse
39
To An Artist
40
The Last Toast
41
Voronezh
(The field of Kulikovo was the scene of a famous battle against the
Tartar Horde in 1378. Mandelshtam was exiled for a time to
Voronezh, south of Moscow on the River Don.)
42
Cleopatra
43
From: The Seventh Book
Shade
44
‘The souls of those I love are on high stars.’
45
Two Poems
46
II
47
From: Northern Elegies
Thunder
48
Requiem
1961
Instead of a Preface
49
Dedication
March 1940
50
Prologue
51
1.
1935.
52
2.
53
3.
54
4.
55
5
56
6.
1939.
57
7. The Sentencing
Summer, 1939.
58
8. To Death
59
9.
60
10. Crucifixion.
II
1940-1943
61
Epilogue
II
62
and if they shut my tormented lips, shut my
mouth where a hundred million people cry,
March, 1940
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Index by First Line
64
In every work of yours I find, ............................................................ 40
I drink to our ruined house, ................................................................ 41
And the town is frozen solid in a vice,............................................... 42
She has already kissed Antony’s dead lips, ....................................... 43
Tallest, most suave of us, why Memory, ........................................... 44
The souls of those I love are on high stars. ........................................ 45
Desolate the victories ......................................................................... 46
Others in the south may still linger, ................................................... 47
There will be thunder then. Remember me. ....................................... 48
In the dreadful years of the Yezhov terror I spent ............................. 49
Before this sorrow mountains bow, ................................................... 50
Those days, when only the dead ........................................................ 51
They took you away at dawn, ............................................................ 52
Quiet flows the silent Don,................................................................. 53
No it is not I, someone else is suffering. ............................................ 54
They should have shown you, little teaser, ........................................ 55
Seventeen months I’ve pleaded.......................................................... 56
Lightly the weeks fly, too,.................................................................. 57
It has fallen, the word of stone ........................................................... 58
You’ll come regardless – why not today?.......................................... 59
Already madness hovers .................................................................... 60
Angelic choirs, the mighty hour of glory, .......................................... 61
I learned to know how faces fall apart, .............................................. 62
Once more, the remembered hour’s near. .......................................... 62
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