I was raised in checkered silence
in the cool nursery of the young century.
Human voices did not touch me,
it was the wind whose voice I heard.
I favored burdocks and nettles,
but dearest to me was the silver willow,
my long companion through the years,
whose weeping branches
fanned my insomnia with dreams.
Oddly, I have survived it,
out there a stump remains. Now other willows
with alien voices intone
under our skies.
And I am silent
as though a brother had died.

Willow by Anna Akhmatova, 1940