Why Is This Age Worse...?

Anna Akhmatova 1889 (Odessa) – 1966 (Moscow)



Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 28, 2023

20 sec read
129

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXXX XXXX
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 353
Words 67
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 4, 4

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova was born in 1889 in Odessa on the Black Sea coast. In 1910 she married Nikolai Gumilev, who was also a poet. He was shot as an alleged counter-revolutionary in 1921. Very little of Akhmatova's poetry was published between 1923 and 1941. After Stalin's death her poetry began to be published again. She died in 1966, in a suburb of Moscow. more…

All Anna Akhmatova poems | Anna Akhmatova Books

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