The speaker recalls a time when "only the dead smiled" and a city swung like "a needless appendage" in this poem's "Prologue."
In a section of this poem written in quatrains, the speaker drinks the "3ery wine" of madness and sinks "into the valley of the blind." This poem's speaker tells death, "You will come in any case, so why not now?...I have turned o5f the lights and thrown the door wide open for you." The speaker recalls a time when "only the dead smiled" and a city swung like "a needless appendage" in this poem's "Prologue." In a prose section at the beginning of this poem, "something like a smile slip[s] across what had once been [the] face" of a woman who whispers to the author, "But can you describe this?" as they stand in line outside a prison. This acmeist poem mourns the imprisonment of the author's son Lev Gumilev and the death of her husband Nikolai Punin under Stalinism. For 10 points, name this poem by Anna Akhmatova.
In a section of this poem written in quatrains, the speaker drinks the "3ery wine" of madness and sinks "into the valley of the blind."
Requiem [or Rekviem]