Boris Pasternak
Definition of the Soul

To fly off, a ripe pear in a storm.
With one leaf clinging on as it must.
Mad devotion! It quitted the branch!
It will choke with its throat full of dust!

A ripe pear, more aslant than the wind.
What devotion! “You'll bray me? You're brash!"
Look! In beauty the thunder-spent storm
Has blazed out, crumbled down — sunk to ash.

And our birthplace is burned to a crisp.
Say, fledgling, where now is your nest?
O my leaf, with the fears of a finch!
My shy silk, why still fight and protest?

Rest in concrement, song, unafraid.
Whither now? All striving is naught.
Ah, “here": mortal adverb! The throb
Of concrescence could give it no thought.

Translated by Babette Deutsch