Anna Akhmatova

I read her work for the first time nearly six months ago. For some reason, I loved it instantly. I wish I could read this in it's original Russian form:

REQUIEM
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE -

In the awful days of the Yezhovschina I passed seventeen months in the outer waiting line of the prison visitors in Leningrad. Once, somebody ‘identified’ me there. Then a woman, standing behind me in the line, which, of course, never heard my name, waked up from the torpor, typical for us all there, and asked me, whispering into my ear (all spoke only in a whisper there):

“And can you describe this?”

And I answered:

“Yes, I can.”

Then the weak similarity of a smile glided over that, what had once been her face.