Boris Pasternak
Magdalene

I

Each night my demon drops right in
To take more payback for the past.
The memories of ugly sin
Return and gnaw my tortured heart:
Those days, a slave to man’s worst whim,
I’d been a frenzied outcast,
And only streets dared take me in.

With minutes left, to my chagrin,
A deathly silence soon ensues.
And yet, before away they spin,
I’ll break my life of long misuse
In front of you, at life’s last rim,
As if an alabaster cruse.

Oh I would be a sorry sight,
My Teacher, Savior, my Fate,
But for eternity each night
Awaiting by the tableside,
As well as my next caller might,
Ensnared in cobwebs of my trade.

But what is sin — explain to me,
And death, and hell, and sulfur flame,
If anyone can plainly see
That like an offshoot of a tree,
I’m one with you in boundless pain.

When I, Oh Jesus, prop your feet
Against my lap, I’m all consumed
By grief and, swooning, learn the need
To hug the canted cross… I’ve leaned
Close to your body and entreat:
Lord, let me help you be entombed.

II

Having festive cleanup at its summit
Makes for too much bustle — I retreat
And with fragrant ointment from a bucket
I anoint your holiest of feet.

Feeling round, I cannot find the sandals
And keep crying, blinded to the scene,
As my stranded hair in matted tangles
Drapes my eyes like an impervious screen.

And I press your feet against me blindly,
Bathe them, Christ, in tears I have let loose,
Wrap them with a string of beads contritely,
Drop my hair on top like a burnoose.

I can see the future with precision,
Such as if you’d stopped the time in flight.
And I now possess prophetic vision
That can match the sybils’ vatic sight.

As the temple veil descends tomorrow,
We will huddle tightly on the side,
And the Earth will sway beneath in sorrow,
Taking pity on me — hope it might.

Then the guards will turn at someone’s beckon,
Leading back their horses in a swarm,
And the cross will madly dash to heaven,
Like a twister born amid a storm.

I will sprawl beneath the cross in frenzy,
Bite my lip, be ravaged by the loss.
You will spread your arms for far too many
From the ends of that departing cross.

But for whom is so much utter vastness,
So much hurt and might the world bestows?
Does it have the souls and lives to match this?
Does it have the rivers, towns, and groves?

Such three days until then will have happened,
Pushed me down such emptiness and dearth
That within that terrifying fragment
I will lift myself to a rebirth.

Translated by Yuri Menis