Boris Pasternak
Sparrow Hills

A breast kissed wet, as though under a shower!
But summer streams do not flow forever,
And we cannot stay on here night after night,
Raising dust to the accordion’s low drone.

I’ve heard about old age — a frightening prediction!
No crashing wave will lift its hands to the stars.
Imagine: they say there is no face in the fields,
no heart in the pond and, in the forest, no God.

Let your soul break free! The day bubbles like surf.
It's the noontime of the world. Where are your eyes?
Look: high in the treetops, thought is a simmering mix
Of woodpeckers, pine cones, heat, needles and clouds.

Here the track of the city trolley ends.
Machines are barred; pine trees will have to do.
From here on, it’s Sunday — a parting of branches,
A dash through the meadow and a slide on the grass.

Weaving our steps with sunlight and Whitsunday,
The woods insist the world is always like this.
The trees believe it; the meadow understands;
It pours down from the sky across our laps.

Translated by Frank Beck