Wednesday Verse

This poet, who lost a son in Stalin's gulags, seems an appropriate choice while reading Bloodlands.

 

And You, My Friends Who Have Been Called Away

by Anna Akhmatova

 
And you, my friends who have been called away,
I have been spared to mourn for you and weep,
Not as a frozen willow over your memory,
But to cry to the world the names of those who sleep.
What names are those!
I slam shut the calendar,
Down on your knees, all!
Blood of my heart,
The people of Leningrad march out in even rows,
The living, the dead:  fame can't tell them apart.