Boris Pasternak
On early train

Near Moscow living, I, this winter,
In blizzard, chill, and snow,
On business when it was essential
Always caught the train to town.

When I went out on some occasions
The street was black as pitch.
And through the forests dark I scattered
My tread that creaked at every step.

Confronting me at the highway crossing
White willows straggled in the waste.
Above, the constellations towered
In January’s frozen ditch.

At the backyards, normally
The mail train or Number Forty
Tried hard to overhaul me, but I
Was aiming at the Six o’Clock.

Then the cunning wrinkles of the light
In feelers gathered round.
A searchlight sped full speed upon
The staggered viaduct.

In the compartment’s stifling heat,
I gave myself up wholly
To a surge of inborn weakness
I’d sucked in from the breast.

Through all the trials of the past,
The years of war and hardship,
I silently identified
Russia’s inimitable features.

Mastering my adoration,
And deifying, I observed:
Here were locksmiths, workers,
Students, and peasant women.

In them I found no servile traits
Such as great need imposes,
And, like any gentlemen, they bore
Discomfort and bad news.

Closely packed as in a carriage,
In every kind of pose,
Adults and children were engrossed
In reading as though they’d been wound up.

Then Moscow met us in the gloom
Which sometimes shone like silver,
And leaving the ambiguous light,
We walked out of the subway.

Posterity shoved me to the wall,
And splashed me on the way,
With fresh bird-cherry soap
And sweetly smelling honeycake.

Translated by George Reavey