«For the resounding valor of millennia to come, / For the high-sounding name of the great human race, / I’ve cut myself off from honor and joy / At my ancestors’ feast, from my cup and my place. The wolfhound century leaps at my throat / But it isn’t wolf’s blood that flows through m...»
«I drink to military asters, to all that I’m censured about, / To the fur coats of nobles, to asthma, to the jaundiced Petersburg day, To the music of pines in Savoie, gasoline on the Champs-Elysees, / To roses in a Rolls-Royce saloon, to Parisian pictures’ oil paint. I drink to the surf of...»
«(Akhmatova) Preserve my speech forever for its taste of sadness and smoke, / For its resin of mutual forbearance, for its tar of conscience and work. / So Novgorod well water must be sweet and black, / To reflect as seven fins a Christmastide star. And for this, my father, my coarse helper a...»
«Enough of sniveling! Shove our papers in the desk, / By a fancy devil I’m now possessed / As if my favorite barber, Francois, / Had shampooed my hair to the roots. I’ll make a bet Pm not yet dead, / And like a jockey, I’ll stake my head / That I can still create an impact / And st...»