Boris Pasternak
The Spring High Water

By waning flickers of the sunset,
A horseman trudged through trees and brush.
He sought a distant Ural farmstead
Amid the woods in snow and slush.

The horse’s spleen took quite a wagging;
And tuned to splashing of the hooves,
The waters echoed closely tracking
And churned up funnels in the brooks.

Each time the rider’s rein would loosen
So that the horse could slow its pace,
The spring high water, dark and gruesome,
Would roar and rumble giving chase.

Some seemed like laughing, some like crying;
Hard rocks got crushed against bedrock;
Uprooted stumps were sent up flying
and fell in swirls which ran amok.

Amid the sunset’s conflagration,
A nightingale insanely raved;
Like tolling bells, its aberration
Boomed on through branches black-engraved.

Like fabled Nightingale the Robber,
He whistled in the Seven Oaks
Where widowed willows leaned their somber
Head covers over grassy slopes.

What kind of grief, what crush so wicked
Brought forth this vigorous display?
Whom did he, in that wayless thicket,
With rifle buckshot aim to spray?

It seemed he’d walk out as a goblin
Whence fugitives would camp perchance
To guards on foot or horseback wobbling
At posts of local partisans.

The woods and fields, the earth and heaven
Sought out that sound indeed arcane,
Those measured beats composed to leaven
Derangement, torment, bliss, and pain. 

Translated by Yuri Menis