Boris Pasternak
We`re few, perhaps three, hellish fellows...

We're few, perhaps three, hellish fellows
Who hail from the flaming Donetz,
With a fluid gray bark for our cover
Made of rain-clouds and soldiers' soviets
And verses and endless debates
About art or it may be freight rates.

We used to be people. We're epochs.
Pell-mell we rush caravanwise
As the tundra to groans of the tender
And tension of pistons and ties.
Together we'll rip through your prose,
We'll whirl, a tornado of crows,

And be off! But you'll not understand it
Till late. So the wind in the dawn
Hits the thatch on the roof — for a moment —
But puts immortality on
At trees' stormy sessions, in speech
Of boughs the roof's shingles can't reach.

Translated by Babette Deutsch