Boris Pasternak
Spring 1944

This spring there is a change in everything.
More lively is the sparrows' riot.
I shall not even try to tell of it,
How bright my soul is and how quiet.

My thoughts and writings are quite different,
And from the choir's loud octaves singing
The mighty voice of earth is audible
Of liberated countries ringing.

The breath of spring across this land of ours
Wipes winter's marks from off its spaces
And washes off black rings that tears have made
Round red eyes of Slavonic faces.

The grass is waiting everywhere to burst.
And though in ancient Prague the alleys
Are silent, each more crooked than the rest,
They’ll burst in song soon, like the gullies.

From Czech, Moravian and Serbian,
By the soft hands of spring uplifted;
Tales tear away the sheet of lawlessness
And burst with buds where snow has drifted.

All will be dim in the mist of fairy-tales,
Like patterns on the wall that dazzle
In golden chambers where the Boyars lived
Or on the great church of St. Basil.

A dreamer and a thinker in the night,
Moscow is dearer than the world. Her dower
Is to be home and source of everything
With which the centuries will flower.

Translated by Cecil Maurice Bowra