The Steppe
How lovely those journeys into quiet!
Boundless the steppe, like a seascape,
ants rustle, and the feather-grass sighs,
mosquitoes go whining through space.
The hayricks line up with the clouds,
volcano after volcano, they fade.
Grown silent, damp, the boundless steppe,
you drift, you’re buffeted, you sway.
The mist overtakes us, washes, a sea,
and burrs are clinging to stockings, today
it’s lovely to tramp the steppe’s shore,
you drift, you’re buffeted, you sway.
Is that a rick in the mist? Who knows?
Is that one ours? Yes, it’s found.
There! Yes, that’s it all right, though.
The rick, and the mist, and the steppe all round.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Confession
Life returned with a cause-the way
Some strange chance once interrupted it.
Just as on that distant summer day,
I am standing in the same old street.
People are the same, and people's worries,
And the sunset's still a fireball,
Just the way death's night once in a hurry
Nailed it to the ancient mansion's wall.
Women, in the same cheap clothes attired,
Are still wearing down their shoes at night.
Afterwards, against the roofing iron
They are by the garrets crucified.
Here is one of them. She looks so weary
As she steps across the threshold, and
Rising from the basement, drab and dreary,
Walks across the courtyard on a slant.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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On a fateful day, an unlucky time
On a fateful day, an unlucky time,
Unannounced, it may happen thus:
Stifling, blacker still than a monastery
Utter madness descends on us.
Bitter frost. The night, as a decency,
Is observing the icy cold.
In an armchair, the ghost mumbles on and on,
Still the same, in his winter coat.
And the branch outside, and the parquet floor,
And his cheek, and the poker's shade-
All are shot with repentance and sleepiness
Of the blizzard that raved night and day.
Now the night is calm. Bright and frosty night.
Like a puppy suckling, still blind,
With the whole of their darkness-the palisade
Drinks the sparkle of stars through the pines.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Mary Magdalene II
People clean their homes before the feast.
Stepping from the bustle of the street
I go down before Thee on my knees
And anoint with myrrh Thy holy feet.
Groping round, I cannot find the shoes
For the tears that well up with my sighs.
My impatient tresses, breaking loose,
Like a pall hang thick before my eyes.
I take up Thy feet onto my lap,
Wash them clean with hot tears from my eyes,
In my hair Thy precious feet I wrap,
And my string of pearls around them tie.
I now see the future in detail,
As if it were stopped in flight by Thee.
Like a raving sibyl, I could tell
What will happen, how it will all be.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Parting
A man is standing in the hall
His house not recognizing.
Her sudden leaving was a flight,
Herself, maybe, surprising.
The chaos reigning in the room
He does not try to master.
His tears and headache hide in gloom
The extent of his disaster.
His ears are ringing all day long
As though he has been drinking.
And why is it that all the time
Of waves he keeps on thinking?
When frosty window-panes blank out
The world of light and motion,
Despair and grief are doubly like
The desert of the ocean.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Your Picture
It's with your laughing picture that I'm living now,
You whose wrists are so slender and crackle at the joints,
You who wring your hands yet are unwilling to go,
You whose guests stay for hours sharing sadness and joys.
You who'll run from the cards and Rakoczy bravura,
From the glass of the drawing-room and from the guests
To the keyboard on fire, unable to endure
Bones and roses and dice and rosettes and the rest.
You will fluff up your hair, and a reckless tea-rose,
Smelling of cigarettes, pin to your bright-red sash,
And then waltz to your glory, your sadness and woes
Tossing off like a scarf, beaming, breathless and flushed.
You will crumple the skin of an orange and swallow
Cooling morsels again and again in your haste
To return to the hall, to the whirling and mellow
Lights, and air with the sweet sweat of fresh waltzes laced.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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From early dawn the thirtieth of April...
From early dawn the thirtieth of April
Is given up to children of the town,
And caught in trying on the festive necklace,
By dusk it only just is settling down.
Like heaps of squashy berries under muslin
The town emerges out of crimson gauze.
Along the streets the boulevards are dragging
Their twilight with them, like a rank of dwarves.
The evening world is always eve and blossom,
But this one with a sprouting of its own
From May-day anniversaries will flower
One day into a commune fully blown.
For long it will remain a day of shifting,
Pre-festive cleaning, fanciful decor,
As once it used to be with Whitsun birches
Or pan-Athenian fires long before.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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White Night
I keep thinking of times that are long past,
Of a house in the Petersburg Quarter.
You had come from the steppeland Kursk Province,
Of a none-too-rich mother the daughter.
You were nice, you had many admirers.
On that distant white night we were sitting
On your window-sill, looking from high on
On the phantom-like scene of the city.
The street-lamps, like gauze butterflies fluttering,
Had been touched by the chill of the morning.
My soft words, as I opened my heart to you,
Matched the slumbering vistas before us.
We were plighted with timid fidelity
To the very same nebulous mystery
As the cityscape spreading unendingly
Far beyond the Neva, through the distances.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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In Memory of Marina Tsvetaeva
Dismal day, with the weather inclement.
Inconsolably rivulets run
Down the porch in front of the doorway;
Through my wide-open windows they come.
But behind the old fence on the roadside,
See, the public gardens are flooded.
Like wild beasts in a den, the rainclouds
Sprawl about in shaggy disorder.
In such weather, I dream of a volume
On the beauties of Earth in our age,
And I draw an imp of the forest
Just for you on the title-page.
Oh, Marina, I'd find it no burden,
And the time has been long overdue:
Your sad clay should be brought from Yelabuga
By a requiem written for you.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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On The Steamer
The stir of leaves, the chilly morning air
Were like delirium; half awake
Jaws clamped; the dawn beyond the Kama glared
Blue, as the plumage of a drake.
There was a clattering of crockery,
A yawning steward taking stock,
And in the depth, as high as candlesticks,
Within the river, glow-worms flocked.
They hung from streets along the waterfront,
A scintillating string; it chimed
Three times; the steward with a napkin tried
To scratch away some candle grime.
Like a grey rumour, crawling from the past,
A mighty epic of the reeds,
With ripples in the beads of street lamps, fast
Towards Perm the Kama ran upon a breeze.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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