Boris Pasternak
In everything I long to reach...

In everything I long to reach
The very essence.
In my toil, in searching for my path,
In my heart’s unrest.

To the pith of days now past,
To their reasons,
To the foundations, to the roots,
To the very core.

Forever grasping at the thread
Of fates, of happenings;
To live, to think, to feel, to love,
To make discoveries.

O, if I only had the gift —
If only partly —
I’d pen eight lines
On the qualities of passion.

On transgressions, on sins,
On escapes, pursuits,
On the accidents of haste,
On elbows, on the palms of hands.

I’d derive passion’s law,
Its principle,
And I’d go on repeating
The initials of its names.

I’d stake out poetry like a garden.
With all the quiverings of their veins,
The linden trees would blossom in it,
Single-file, one right behind the other.

I’d give my poems the aroma of roses,
The breath of mint,
Meadows, sedge, the mowing of hay,
The storm’s thunderclaps.

So too did Chopin, once upon a time, impart
The living miracle
Of farms, and parks, and glades, and graves
To his études.

The delight and torment
Of triumph won
Is the drawn-back string
Of a taught bow.

Translated by Mark Pettus