Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, <br />not sticks of burning incense. <br />You lived aloof, maintaining to the end <br />your magnificent disdain. <br />You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes, <br />and suffocated inside stifling walls. <br />Alone you let the terrible stranger in, <br />and stayed with her alone. <br /> <br />Now you're gone, and nobody says a word <br />about your troubled and exalted life. <br />Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn <br />at your dumb funeral feast. <br />Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, <br />I, sick with grief for the buried past, <br />I, smoldering on a slow fire, <br />having lost everything and forgotten all, <br />would be fated to commemorate a man <br />so full of strength and will and bright inventions, <br />who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, <br />hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.<br /><br />Anna Akhmatova<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/here-is-my-gift/
