In 1999, at the 30th session of the UNESCO General Conference, it was decided to celebrate World Poetry Day on March 21 every year. We propose today to recall the most famous lines of Anna Akhmatova about the Summer Garden.

SUMMER GARDEN
I want roses, in that only garden,
Where the best in the world stands from the fences,

Where the statues remember me young
And I remember them under the Neva water.

In the fragrant silence between the regal lindens
I imagine the creaking of ship masts.

And the swan, as before, swims through the ages,
Admiring the beauty of his double.

And hundreds of thousands of steps are dead asleep
Enemies and friends, friends and enemies.

And the procession of shadows has no end in sight
From a granite vase to a palace door.

My white nights whisper there
About someone’s high and secret love.

And everything burns with mother-of-pearl and jasper,
But the source of light is mysteriously hidden.

1959