User:IrinaOfKamaz

Voronezh

For Osip Mandelstam

And the city is set fixed in ice: trees, walls, snow - petrified. I pick my way across crystal shards. Brightly coloured sledges hiss quietly by. High above Peter's statue his ravens soar over poplars and pale green domes that glow softly in the dust strewn twilight, while the evening breeze brings a distant echo of mighty Kulikovo saving our land. And the poplars stir, tinkling gently, then suddenly stronger as if ringing out in joyful exultation: a host greeting guests at a wedding party.

But in the room of the exiled poet Fear and the Muse alternate their turn and a night drags on that brooks no dawn.

— Anna Akhmatova