Boris Pasternak
To Love, — to leave, — with the thunder not ceasing...

To Love, — to leave, — with the thunder not ceasing,
Trampled by boredom not even knowing the boot’s tread,
Tripping over a hedgehog, and then, for good, repaying
The cowberry’s evil with a gossamer’s web.

To drink from the bough while the face
Recoils from Prussian blue lashes:
“What is this echo?!” — on to the end
Moving the wrong way, imprinted with kisses.

Like marching — one plods along loaded with turnips.
At sunset to know that the stars start to shine
To scare off the sun and the oat-laden carts,
And to bring Margarete to convulsions.

To renounce speech, subscribing
To storms of tears in the eyes of a Valkyrie,
And in the full glow of the sky to grow dumb,
Drowning in the ether like a mast in a forest.

Gradually, amid thorns, people rake up the torn
Events of the years, like lumps of spruce:
On the highway; in a procession to a Tavern;
In the light; they suffered cold; they ate fish.

And collapsing time begins to sing: “Hoary,
I walk, and strengthless, I fall. At last
The city’s pressed down with goose-grass,
Awash in the tears of soldiers’ wives.

In moonless shadows of a long threshing barn
Or in a fire with groceries and a water bottle,
Most likely, he — gray-bearded, worn,
Will die in his tracks like an animal.”

As I was singing, I died as I sang.
And dying, I reached back to grasp
At her hand, like a boomerang,
For — remembering much — forgiveness.

Translated by Don Mager