Boris Pasternak
Spring floods

The sunset’s lights were dying down.
Across the thickets of the copse,
Toward a distant Ural town,
A man was riding on his horse.

The horse was trembling with spite
And echoing the noisy clatter,
The water ran along its side
And wildly splattered in the gutter.

And when he loosened up the reins
Or slowed the pace, alert with caution,
The water swamped the nearby plains
With loud clamor and commotion.

Somebody laughed, somebody wept,
Stones beat on stones with wrathful fury
And wild, raging whirlpools swept
The stumps of trees ripped out fully.

The sunset’s pale blaze was sinking.
Out from the distant charcoal trees,
A nightingale starting singing
His blaring song, which wouldn’t cease.

There, where a willow in the distance,
Into the gully, dipped her veil,
Out of the seven oaks, he whistled,
As though the Robber-Nightingale.

O, what misfortune, what foreboding,
Could bring about such a shrill?
And with so many shots exploding,
Whom did he really mean to kill?

It seemed that any moment, he,
A goblin and a wanted man,
Would step out on the road to greet
The frontier posts of partisan.

The woods, the fields, the earth, the sky
All caught those intermittent strains,
Those equal portions of the pie,
Of madness, sorrow, glee and pain.

Translated by Andrey Kneller