If I Can't Have Love, If I

No Foreign Sky Protected Me, No Stranger's Wing Shielded My Face. I Stand As Witness To The Common Lot Survivor Of That Time, That Place.

Today I Have So Much To Do: I Must Kill Memory Once And For All, I Must Turn My Soul To Stone, I Must Learn To Live Again. Unless ... Summer's Ardent Rustling Is Like A Festival Outside My Window.

During The Terrible Years Of The Yekhov Terror I Spent Seventeen Months In The Prison Queues In Leningrad. One Day Someone ‘identified’ Me. Then A Woman With Lips Blue With Cold Who Was Standing Behind Me, And Of Course Had Never Heard Of My Name, Came Out Of The Numbness Which Affected Us All And Whispered In My Ear—(we All Spoke In Whispers There): ‘could You Describe This?’ I Said, ‘i Can!’ Then Something Resembling A Smile Slipped Over What Had Once Been Her Face.

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.

But Fear And The Muse In Turn Guard The Place Where The Banished Poet Has Gone And The Night That Comes With Quickened Pace Is Ignorant Of Dawn.