Boris Pasternak
Eve

On shore the trees stand looking on
While midday casts the clouds on bet
Into the meditative pond
For want of any other net.

And like a net the sky sinks in
The pensively expectant waters
And into it the bathers swim,
Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.

Then half a dozen girls come out
Without a stir among the shoots
And rivulets of water spout
As they wring out their bathing suits.

And, firing the imagination,
The coils of fabric coil and twist
As though the serpent of temptation
Had really marked them for its nest.

O woman, on your looks I dote,
But have no mental blanks to fill;
You're like the stricture in a throat
Seized by an unexpected thrill.

You seem created as a draft,
A stanza from another sequence,
As if indeed the handicraft
Of somebody who knew no equals,

Made of my rib while asleep I lay,
You broke the clasping arms apart,
The very image of dismay,
A spasm that grips and wrings man's heart.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg