Poem Without a Hero

“Often I hear about various false and absurd interpretations of ‘Poem Without a Hero.’ I have even been advised to make it more clear.

I will refrain from doing this.

The poem does not have any third, seventh, or twenty-ninth meanings.

I shall neither change it nor explain it.

‘What I have written —I have written.’”

~Anna Akhmatova

November 1944

Leningrad