I will always be indebted to you, Big Beautiful Country. Your nihilists, your kuzaks, your coal miners. But most all, for your overcrowding dead, for the blood spilled for love on frozen lakes of snow.

Courage

by Anna Akhmatova

We know what trembles on the scales,
and what we must steel ourselves to face
The bravest hour strikes on our clocks:

May courage not abandon us!
Let bullets kill us--we are not afraid,
nor are we bitter, though our housetops fall.

We will preserve you, Russian speech,
from servitude in foreign chains,
keep you alive, great Russian word,

fit for the songs of our children's children,
pure on their tongues, and free.

23 February 1942

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