All is despoiled, abandoned, sold;
Death’s wing has swept the sky of color;
All’s eaten by a hungry dolor.
What is this light which we behold?Odors of cherry-blossom sigh
From the rumored forest beyond the town.
At night, new constellations crown
The high, clear heavens of July.Closer it comes, and closer still
To houses ruinous and blind:
Some marvelous thing yet undivided,
A fiat of the century’s will.
“To N.V. Rikov-Gukovski”
—By Anna Akhmatova