Poems Are My Link With The Times,

I Know Beginnings, I Know Endings Too, And Life-in-death, And Something Else I'd Rather Not Recall Just Now.

In The Terrible Years Of The Yezhov Terror I Spent Seventeen Months Waiting In Line Outside The Prison In Leningrad. One Day Somebody In The Crowd Identified Me . . . And Asked Me In A Whisper . . . "can You Describe This?" And I Said: "i Can."

The Triumphs Of A Mysterious Non-meeting Are Desolate Ones; Unspoken Phrases, Silent Words.

But Here, In The Murk Of Conflagration, Where Scarcely A Friend Is Left To Know We, The Survivors, Do Not Flinch From Anything, Not From A Single Blow. Surely The Reckoning Will Be Made After The Passing Of This Cloud. We Are The People Without Tears, Straighter Than You ... More Proud.

This Cruel Age Has Deflected Me.