Boris Pasternak
Parting

A man from his own doorstep stares,
And recognizes nothing.
She’d gone — or fled — and everywhere —
The traces of destruction.

What chaos in each room resides!
Its vast extent, its violence
Are blurred before his tear-filled eyes,
And blunted by his migraines.

Since dawn some sound has filled his ears.
Is he awake, or dreaming?
And whence to his mind’s eye appears
The sight of oceans seething?

When through the frosted window-panes
God’s heavens glow but dimly,
This exit-less and empty pain
Sea-wilderness resembles.

She was to him beyond all price,
Her every trait a treasure,
As near as shoreline to the tide,
As sand to crashing azure.

Like rushes in that ocean's surge,
Left flooded by the tempest,
Deep in his spirit lay, submerged,
Her very form and image.

In years of trial, in eras of
Unthinkable existence,
Some wave of fate bore her aloft
And pressed her close against him.

Through storms, through darkness without dawn,
And perils without number,
It bore her ever on, and on,
And did not tear him from her.

And now — her absence. (Truth be told,
Perhaps beyond her power.)
This parting will consume them whole,
Their every bone devour.

And so the man looks round about,
Where she, in those last minutes,
Had turned her dresser upside-down,
And rifled all within it.

He wanders till the sun has set,
And packs what she'd abandoned,
Collecting every scattered shred,
And every sewing pattern...

And, pricked by something in the pile —
A needle left there, idly —
At once he sees her, all, entire,
And falls to weeping, quietly.

Translated by Mark Pettus