PASTERNAK, Boris


Hamlet

The murmurs ebb; onto the stage I enter.

I am trying, standing at the door,

To discover in the distant echoes

What the coming years may hold in store.

The nocturnal darkness with a thousand

Binoculars is focused onto me.

Take away this cup, O Abba, Father,

Everything is possible to Thee.

I am fond of this Thy stubborn project,

And to play my part I am content.

But another drama is in progress,

And, this once, O let me be exempt.

But the plan of action is determined,

And the end irrevocably sealed.

I am alone; all round me drowns in falsehood:

Life is not a walk across a field.


Here a riddle has drawn a strange nailmark

Here a riddle has drawn a strange nailmark. To sleep now!

I'll reread, understand with the light of the sun,

But until I am wakened, to touch the beloved

As I do has been given to none.

How I touched you! So touched were you even by the copper

Of my lips, as an audience is touched by a play,

And the kiss was like summer; it lingered and lingered,

Only later the thunderstorm came.

And I drank in long draughts, like the birds, half-unconscious.

The stars trickle slowly through the throat to the crop,

While the nightingales roll up their eyes in a shudder

From the firmament draining the night drop by drop.

About These Poems

On winter pavements I will pound

Them down with glistening glass and sun,

Will let the ceiling hear their sound,

Damp corners-read them, one by one.

The attic will repeat my themes

And bow to winter with my lines,

And send leapfrogging to the beams

Bad luck and oddities and signs.

Snow will not monthly sweep and fall

And cover up beginnings, ends.

One day I'll suddenly recall:

The sun exists! Will see new trends,

Will see-the world is not the same;

Then, Christmas jackdaw-like will blink

And with a frosty day explain

What we, my love and I, should think.

The window-halves I'll throw apart,

In muffler from the cold to hide,

And call to children in the yard,

'What century is it outside?'

Who trod a trail towards the door,

The hole blocked up with sleet and snow,

The while I smoked with Byron or

Was having drinks with Edgar Poe?

While known in Darial or hell

Or armoury, as friend, I dipped

Like Lermontov's deep thrill, as well

My life in vermouth as my lips.


The Drowsy Garden

The drowsy garden scatters insects

Bronze as the ash from braziers blown.

Level with me and with my candle,

Hang flowering worlds, their leaves full-grown.

As into some unheard-of dogma

I move across into this night,

Where a worn poplar age has grizzled

Screens the moon's strip of fallow light,

Where the pond lies, an open secret,

Where apple bloom is surf and sigh,

And where the garden, a lake dwelling,

Holds out in front of it the sky.


A Dream

I dreamt of autumn in the window's twilight,

And you, a tipsy jesters' throng amidst. '

And like a falcon, having stooped to slaughter,

My heart returned to settle on your wrist.

But time went on, grew old and deaf. Like thawing

Soft ice old silk decayed on easy chairs.

A bloated sunset from the garden painted

The glass with bloody red September tears.

But time grew old and deaf. And you, the loud one,

Quite suddenly were still. This broke a spell.

The dreaming ceased at once, as though in answer

To an abruptly silenced bell.

And I awakened. Dismal as the autumn

The dawn was dark. A stronger wind arose

To chase the racing birchtrees on the skyline,

As from a running cart the streams of straws.

February

February. Take ink and weep,

write February as you’re sobbing,

while black Spring burns deep

through the slush and throbbing.

Take a cab. For a clutch of copecks,

through bell-towers’ and wheel noise,

go where the rain-storm’s din breaks,

greater than crying or ink employs.

Where rooks in thousands falling,

like charred pears from the skies,

drop down into puddles, bringing

cold grief to the depths of eyes.

Below, the black shows through,

and the wind’s furrowed with cries:

the more freely, the more truly

then, sobbing verse is realised.


March

The sun is hotter than the top ledge in a steam bath;

The ravine, crazed, is rampaging below.

Spring -- that corn-fed, husky milkmaid --

Is busy at her chores with never a letup.

The snow is wasting (pernicious anemia --

See those branching veinlets of impotent blue?)

Yet in the cowbarn life is burbling, steaming,

And the tines of pitchforks simply glow with health.

These days -- these days, and these nights also!

With eavesdrop thrumming its tattoos at noon,

With icicles (cachectic!) hanging on to gables,

And with the chattering of rills that never sleep!

All doors are flung open -- in stable and in cowbarn;

Pigeons peck at oats fallen in the snow;

And the culprit of all this and its life-begetter--

The pile of manure -- is pungent with ozone.


August

This was its promise, held to faithfully:

The early morning sun came in this way

Until the angle of its saffron beam

Between the curtains and the sofa lay,

And with its ochre heat it spread across

The village houses, and the nearby wood,

Upon my bed and on my dampened pillow

And to the corner where the bookcase stood.

Then I recalled the reason why my pillow

Had been so dampened by those tears that fell-

I'd dreamt I saw you coming one by one

Across the wood to wish me your farewell.

You came in ones and twos, a straggling crowd;

Then suddenly someone mentioned a word:

It was the sixth of August, by Old Style,

And the Transfiguration of Our Lord.

For from Mount Tabor usually this day

There comes a light without a flame to shine,

And autumn draws all eyes upon itself

As clear and unmistaken as a sign.

But you came forward through the tiny, stripped,

The pauperly and trembling alder grove,

Into the graveyard's coppice, russet-red,

Which, like stamped gingerbread, lay there and glowed.

And with the silence of those high treetops

Was neighbour only the imposing sky

And in the echoed crowing of the cocks

The distances and distances rang by:

There in the churchyard underneath the trees,

Like some surveyor from the government

Death gazed on my pale face to estimate

How large a grave would suit my measurement.

All those who stood there could distinctly hear

A quiet voice emerge from where I lay:

The voice was mine, my past; prophetic words

That sounded now, unsullied by decay:

'Farewell, wonder of azure and of gold

Surrounding the Transfiguration's power:

Assuage now with a woman's last caress

The bitterness of my predestined hour!

'Farewell timeless expanse of passing years!

Farewell, woman who flung your challenge steeled

Against the abyss of humiliations:

For it is I who am your battlefield!

'Farewell, you span of open wings outspread,

The voluntary obstinacy of flight,

O figure of the world revealed in speech,

Creative genius, wonder-working might!'

When It Clears Up

The lake is like a giant saucer;

Beyond-a gathering of clouds;

Like stern and dazzling mountain-ranges

Their massif the horizon crowds.

And with the light that swiftly changes,

The landscape never stays the same.

One moment clad in sooty shadows,

The next-the woods are all aflame.

When, after days of rainy weather,

The heavy curtain is withdrawn,

How festive is the sky, burst open!

How full of triumph is the lawn!

The wind dies down, the distance lightens,

And sunshine spreads upon the grass;

The steaming foliage is translucent

Like figures in stained-window glass.

Thus from the church's narrow windows

In glimmering crowns, on spreading wings

Gaze into time in sleepless vigil

Saints, hermits, prophets, angels, kings.

The whole wide world is a cathedral;

I stand inside, the air is calm,

And from afar at times there reaches

My ear the echo of a psalm.

World, Nature, Universe's Essence,

With secret trembling, to the end,

I will thy long and moving service

In tears of happiness attend.

After the Storm

The air is full of after-thunder freshness,

And everything rejoices and revives.

With the whole outburst of its purple clusters

The lilac drinks the air of paradise.

The gutters overflow; the change of weather

Makes all you see appear alive and new.

Meanwhile the shades of sky are growing lighter,

Beyond the blackest cloud the height is blue.

An artist's hand, with mastery still greater

Wipes dirt and dust off objects in his path.

Reality and life, the past and present,

Emerge transformed out of his colour-bath.

The memory of over half a lifetime

Like swiftly passing thunder dies away.

The century is no more under wardship:

High time to let the future have its say.

It is not revolutions and upheavals

That clear the road to new and better days,

But revelations, lavishness and torments

Of someone's soul, inspired and ablaze.