This Cruel Age Has Deflected Me.

And It Seemed To Me That There Were Fires Flying Till Dawn Without Number And I Never Found Out Things-those Strange Eyes Of His-what Colour? Everything Trembling And Singing And Were You My Enemy Or My Friend, Winter Was It Or Summer?

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."

Poems Are My Link With The Times, With The New Life Of My People.

I Have Long Had This Premonition Of A Bright Day And A Deserted House

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