False Alarm
From early morning-nonsense
With tubs and troughs and strain,
With dampness in the evening
And sunsets in the rain.
Deep sighing of the darkness
And choking swallowed tears,
A railway engine's calling
Down from the sixteenth verst.
Outside and in the garden
A short fast-darkening day;
Small breakages and losses
In true September way.
In daytime autumn's vastness
Beyond the stream is rent
By wailing in the graveyard,
By anguish and lament.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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The Patient's Sweater
A life of its own and a long one is led
By this penguin, with nothing to do with the breast-
The wingless pullover, the patient's old vest;
Now pass it some warmth, move the lamp to the bed.
It dreams of the skiing; in darkness it poured
From shaftbows, from harness, from bodies; it seemed
That Christmas itself also sweated and snored;
The walking, the riding-all squeaked and all steamed.
A homestead, and horror and bareness beside,
Cut-glass in the sideboards, and carpets and chests;
The house was inflamed; this attracted the fence;
The lights swam in pleurisy, seen from outside.
Consumed by the sky, bloated shrubs on the way
Were white as a scare and had ice in their looks.
The blaze from the kitchen laid down by the sleigh
On the snow the enormous hands of the cooks.
poem by Boris Pasternak
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Venice
The clatter of a cloudy pane
Awoke me in the small hours.
It hung in a gondola rank
And vacancy weighed on the oars.
The trident of hushed guitars
Was hanging like Scorpio’s stars
Above a marine horizon
Untouched by the smoking sun.
In the domain of the zodiac
The chord was a lonely sound.
Untroubled below by the trident,
The port moved its mists around.
At some time the earth had split off,
Capsized palaces gone to wrack.
A fortress loomed up like a planet;
Like a planet, houses spun back.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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There'll be no one in the house...
There'll be no one in the house
Save for twilight. All alone,
Winter's day seen in the space that's
Made by curtains left undrawn.
Only flash-past of the wet white
Snowflake clusters, glimpsed and gone.
Only roofs and snow, and save for
Roofs and snow-no one at home.
Once more, frost will trace its patterns,
I'll be haunted once again
By my last year's melancholy,
By that other wintertime.
Once more, I'll be troubled by an
Old unexpiated shame,
And the icy firewood famine
Will press on the window-pane.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Sultry Night
It drizzled, but not even grasses
Would bend within the bag of storm;
Dust only gulped its rain in pellets,
The iron roof-in powder form.
The village did not hope for healing.
Deep as a swoon the poppies yearned
Among the rye in inflammation,
And God in fever tossed and turned.
In all the sleepless, universal,
The damp and orphaned latitude,
The sighs and moans, their posts deserting,
Fled with the whirlwind in pursuit.
Behind them ran blind slanting raindrops
Hard on their heels, and by the fence
The wind and dripping branches argued-
My heart stood still-at my expense.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Here—now—our age of socialism!...
Here—now—our age of socialism!
Here in the thick of life below.
Today in the name of things to be
Into the future forth we go.
Like Georgia shining in her beauty,
Like a land of light by open seas,
It beckons-veiled within a mist
Of wild surmise and theories.
There mothers of Putivl no more
Lament like cuckoos their dismay;
There joy no longer looks askance
In fear, but walks abroad by day.
There life and happiness converse
Together, free from hate and strife,
All joined to give their saving strength
And stay to every child and wife.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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After the Interval
About three months ago, when first
Upon our open, unprotected
And freezing garden snowstorms burst
In sudden fury, I reflected
That I would shut myself away
And in seclusion write a section
Of winter poems, day by day,
To supplement my spring collection.
But nonsense piled up mountain-high,
Like snow-drifts hindering and stifling
And half the winter had gone by,
Against all hopes, in petty trifling.
I understood, alas, too late
Why winter-while the snow was falling,
Piercing the darkness with its flakes-
From outside at my house was calling;
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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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.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Change
I used to glorify the poor,
Not simply lofty views expressing:
Their lives alone, I felt, were true,
Devoid of pomp and window-dressing.
No stranger to the manor house,
Its finery and lordly tenor,
I was a friend of down-and-outs,
And shunned the idly sponging manner.
For choosing friendship in the ranks
Of working people, though no rebel,
I had the honour to be stamped
As also one among the rabble.
The state of basements, unadorned,
Of attics with no frills or curtains
Was tangible without pretence
And full of substance, weighty, certain.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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Feasts
I drink the gall of skies in autumn, tuberoses'
Sweet bitterness in your betrayals burning stream;
I drink the gall of nights, of crowded parties' noises,
Of sobbing virgin verse, and of a throbbing dream.
We fiends of studious fight a battle everlasting
Against our daily bread - can't stand the sober mood.
The troubled wind of nights is merely a toastmaster
Whose toasts, as like as not, will do no one much good.
Heredity and death are our guests at table.
A quiet dawn will paint bright-red the tops of trees.
An anapaest, like mice, will on the bread-plate scrabble,
And Cinderella will rush in to change her dress.
The floors have all been swept, and everything is dainty,
And like a child's sweet kiss, breathes quietly my verse,
And Cinderella flees-by cab on days of plenty,
And on shanks' pony when the last small coin is lost.
poem by Boris Pasternak
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