Stars were racing

Stars were racing; waves were washing headlands.
Salt went blind, and tears were slowly drying.
Darkened were the bedrooms; thoughts were racing,
And the Sphinx was listening to the desert.

Candles swam. It seemed that the Colossus'
Blood grew cold; upon his lips was spreading
The blue shadow smile of the Sahara.
With the turning tide the night was waning.

Sea-breeze from Morocco touched the water.
Simooms blew. In snowdrifts snored Archangel.
Candles swam; the rough draft of 'The Prophet'
Slowly dried, and dawn broke on the Ganges.

poem by Boris Pasternak
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The Swifts (1)

The swifts have no strength any more to retain,
To check the light-blue evening coolness.
It burst from their breasts, from their throats, under strain
And flows out of hand in its fullness.

There is not a thing that could stop them, up there,
From shrilly, exultedly crying,
Exclaiming: The earth has made off to nowhere,
O look! It has vanished - O triumph!

As cauldrons of water are ended in steam
When quarrelsome bubbles are rising -
Look - there is no room for the earth - from the seam
Of the gorge to the drawn-out horizon!

poem by Boris Pasternak
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O had I known that thus it happens...

O had I known that thus it happens,
When first I started, that at will
Your lines with blood in them destroy you,
Roll up into your throat and kill,

My answer to this kind of joking
Had been a most decisive 'no'.
So distant was the start, so timid
The first approach-what could one know?

But older age is Rome, demanding
From actors not a gaudy blend
Of props and reading, but in earnest
A tragedy, with tragic end.

A slave is sent to the arena
When feeling has produced a line.
Tnen breathing soil and fate take over
And art has done and must resign.

poem by Boris Pasternak
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‘February. Take ink and weep,’

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:

[...] Read more

poem by Boris Pasternak
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My desk is not so wide that I might lean

My desk is not so wide that I might lean
Against the edge and reach out past the shell
Of board and glass, beyond the isthmus in
The endless miles of my scraped out farewell.

(It's night there now.) Beyond your sultry neck.
(They went to bed.) Behind your shoulders' realm.
(Switched off the light.) At dawn, I'd give them back.
The porch would touch them with a sleepy stem.

No, not with snowflakes! With your arms! Reach far!
Oh you, ten fingers of my pain, the light
Of crystal winter stars-and every star
A sign of northbound snowbound trains being late.

poem by Boris Pasternak
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Autumn Frost

The morning sun shows like a pillar
Of fire through smoke on frosty days.
As on a faulty snap, it cannot
Make out my features in the haze.

The distant trees will hardly see me
Until the sun at last can break
Out of the fog, and flash triumphant
Upon the meadows by the lake.

A passer-by in mist receding
Is recognized when he has passed.
You walk on hoarfrost-covered pathways
As though on mats of plaited bast.

The frost is covered up in gooseflesh,
The air is false like painted cheeks,
The earth is shivering, and sick of
Breathing potato-stalks for weeks.

poem by Boris Pasternak
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Out of Superstition

A box of glazed sour fruit compact,
My narrow room.
And oh the grime of lodging rooms
This side the tomb!

This cubbyhole, out of superstition,
I chose once more.
The walls seem dappled oaks; the door,
A singing door.

You strove to leave; my hand was steady
Upon the latch.
My forelock touched a wondrous forehead;
My lips felt violets.

O Sweet! Your dress as on a day
Not long ago
To April, like a snowdrop, chirps
A gay 'Hello!'

[...] Read more

poem by Boris Pasternak
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To the Memory of Demon

Used to come in the blue
Of the glacier, at night, from Tamara.
With his wingtips he drew
Where the nightmares should boom, where to bar them.

Did not sob, nor entwine
The denuded, the wounded, the ailing…
A stone slab has survived
By the Georgian church, at the railings.

Hunchback shadows, distressed,
Did not dance by the fence of the temple.
Soft, about the princess
The zurna did not question the lamplight,

But the sparks in his hair
Were aglitter and bursting phosphorous,
And the giant did not hear
The dark Caucasus greying for sorrow.

poem by Boris Pasternak
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First Snow

Outside the snowstorm spins, and hides
The world beneath a pall.
Snowed under are the paper-girl,
The papers and the stall.

Quite often our experience
Has led us to believe
That snow falls out of reticence,
In order to deceive.

Concealing unrepentantly
And trimming you in white,
How often he has brought you home
Into the town at night!

While snowflakes blind and blanket out
The distance more and more,
A tipsy shadow gropes his way
And staggers to the door.

[...] Read more

poem by Boris Pasternak
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Spring

How many sticky buds, candle ends
sprout from the branches! Steaming
April. Puberty sweats from the park,
and the forest’s blatantly gleaming.

A noose of feathered throats grips
the wood’s larynx, a lassoed steer,
netted, like a gladiatorial organ,
it groans steel-piped sonatas here.

Poetry! Be a Greek sponge with suckers,
among green stickiness drenched,
I’ll consent, by the sopping wood
of a green-stained garden bench.

Grow sumptuous pleats and flounces,
suck up the gullies and clouds,
Poetry, tonight, I’ll squeeze you out
to make the parched sheets flower.

poem by Boris Pasternak
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