The set of poems is introduced by one prose paragraph that briefly states how she waited for months outside Leningrad Prison, along with many other women, for just a glimpse of fathers, brothers or sons who had been taken away by the NKVD in Soviet Russia. Following the introductory paragraph, the core set of poems in Requiem consists of 10 short numbered poems, beginning with the first reflecting on the arrest of Akhmatova's third husband Nikolay Punin and other close confidants.[4] The next nine core poems make references to the grief and agony she faced when her son, Lev Gumilev was arrested by the NKVD in 1938.[5] She writes, "one hundred million voices shout" through her "tortured mouth".