The Road
Down into the ravine, then forward
Up the embankment to the top,
The ribbon of the road runs snaking
Through wood and field without a stop.
By all the precepts of perspective
Well-surfaced highway windings rush
Among the fields, among the meadows,
Not raising dust, nor stuck in slush.
The peaceful pond nearby ignoring
(On which a duck with ducklings swam)
The road once more is forward soaring
On having crossed and left the dam.
Now-down a slope again it hastens,
Now-on and upwards, in a climb,
As only life, maybe, is meant to
Strain up and onward all the time.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Here will be echoes in the mountains...
Here will be echoes in the mountains,
The distant landslides' rumbling boom,
The rocks, the dwellings in the village,
The sorry little inn, the gloom
Of something black beyond the Terek,
Clouds moving heavily. Up there
The day was breaking very slowly;
It dawned, but light was nowhere near.
One sensed the heaviness of darkness
For miles ahead around Kazbek
Wound on the heights: though some were trying
To throw the halter from their neck.
As if cemented in an oven,
In the strange substance of a dream,
A pot of poisoned food, the region
Of Daghestan there slowly steamed.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Sparrow Hills
Breasts beneath kisses, as though under a tap!
Summer’s stream won’t run for ever.
We can’t pump out the accordion’s roar
night after night, in a dusty fever.
I’ve heard of age. Terrible prophecies!
No wave will lift its hands to the stars.
They say – who believes? No face in the leaves,
no gods in the air, in the ponds: no hearts.
Rouse your soul! Make the day, foaming.
It’s noon in the world. Where are your eyes?
See there, thoughts in the whiteness seething,
fir-cones, woodpeckers, cloud, heat, pines.
Here, the city’s trolley-lines end.
Beyond there’s no rails, it’s the trees.
Beyond – it’s Sunday, breaking branches,
the glade running off, sliding on leaves.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Winter Nears
Winter nears. Once more
the bear’s secret retreat
will vanish under mud’s floor,
to a child’s fretful grief.
Huts will wake in the water,
reflecting paths of smoke,
circled by autumn’s tremor
lovers meet by the fire to talk.
Denizens of the harsh North
whose roof is the clear air,
‘In this sign conquer’, set forth,
marks each unreachable lair.
I love you, provincial haunts,
off the map, the road, past the farms,
the more tired and faded the book,
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Without A Title
So aloof, so meek in your ways,
Now you're fire, you're pure combustion.
Only let me lock up your beauty
Deep, deep down in a poem's dungeon.
See how wholly transformed they are
By the fire in the glowing lampshade;
Edge of wall, edge of window-pane,
Our own figures and our own shadows.
There you sit on cushions, apart,
Legs tucked under you, Turkish fashion.
In the light or in the shadow,
Childlike, always, the way you reason.
Dreaming, now you thread on a string
Beads that lie on your lap in profusion.
Far too sad is your mien, too artless
Is the drift of your conversation.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Craft
When, having finished, I shall move my armchair,
The page will gasp, awakened from the strain.
Delirious, she is half asleep at present,
Obedient to suspense and to the rain.
The heaviness of burnt-out ships has numbed her,
Prostrated, weighted down her senseless form;
You cannot dupe this one by false pretences-
It is the poet who will keep her warm.
I told her at an hour (its secret shudder
Vouchsafed by fancy) when the winter will
Light up green screeching ice, fed up with waiting
Behind an office worker's window sill,
And clocks in banks and other public places,
While drinking in the snow and outside's dark,
Will suddenly jump up and strike-their faces
Crossed by the clockhands at the 'seven' mark-
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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So they begin. With two years gone...
So they begin. With two years gone
From nurse to countless tunes they scuttle.
They chirp and whistle. Then comes on
The third year, and they start to prattle.
So they begin to see and know.
In din of started turbines roaring
Mother seems not their mother now,
And you not you, and home is foreign.
What meaning has the menacing
Beauty beneath the lilac seated,
If to steal children's not the thing?
So first they fear that they are cheated.
So ripen fears. Can he endure
A star to beat him in successes,
When he's a Faust, a sorcerer?
So first his gipsy life progresses.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Railway Station
My dear railway station, my treasure
Of meetings and partings, my friend
In times of hard trials and pleasure,
Your favours have been without end.
My scarf would wrap up my whole being -
The train would pull up, with deep sighs,
The muzzles of brash harpies, leering,
Would puff wet white steam in our eyes.
I'd sit at your side for a moment -
A hug and a kiss, brief and rough.
Farewell then, my joy and my torment.
I'm going, conductor, I'm off!
And, shunting bad weather and sleepers,
The west would break open-I'd feel
It grab me with snowflakes to keep me
From falling down under the wheels.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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God's World
Thin as hair are the shadows of sunset
When they follow drawn-out every tree.
On the road through the forest the post-girl
Hands a parcel and letters to me.
By the trail of the cats and the foxes,
By the foxes' and by the cats' trail,
I return with a bundle of letters
To the house where my joy will prevail.
Countries, continents, isthmuses, frontiers,
Lakes and mountains, discussions and news,
Children, grown-ups, old folk, adolescents,
Appreciations, reports and reviews.
0 respected and masculine letters!
All of you, none excepted, have brought
A display of intelligent logic
Underneath a dry statement of thought.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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It is not seemly to be famous...
It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.
To give your all-this is creation,
And not-to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody's lips!
Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.
Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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