And twines in whirlpools round itself.
And the woods are undressed, uncovered,
And at the service of Christ’s Passion,
Like the ranks of people praying,
Stand trunks of pine trees in a crowd.
And in town, with very little
Space, as at a local meeting,
Trees, stark naked, stand and look
Through the church’s grillwork gates.
And their gaze is filled with terror.
The cause of their alarm is clear.
Gardens are coming through the fence,
The order of the earth is shaken:
It is God they’re burying.
And they see light by the royal doors,
A black pall and a row of candles,
Tear-stained faces—suddenly
The procession of the cross
Comes to meet them with the shroud,
And two birches by the gate
Are forced to step aside for it.
And the procession makes its way
Around the yard and down the walk,
And brings to the chapel from outside
Spring, and springtime conversation,
And air that smacks of blessed bread,
And of spring’s intoxication.
And March squanders its hoard of snow
On cripples crowding by the porch,
As if a man came out to them
Carrying the ark, and opened it,
And gave away all to the very last.
And the singing goes on till dawn,
And, when it has sobbed its fill,
The reading of psalms and the epistle
Reaches more softly from inside
To vacant lots under the lamps.
But at midnight creature and flesh
Fall silent, hearing the springtime rumor
That the moment the weather clears
Death itself may be overcome
By the effort of the Resurrection.
4
White Night
I am dreaming of a far-off time,
A house over on the Petersburg Side.
The daughter of a modest steppe landowner,
You’re taking courses, you were born in Kursk.
You’re sweet, you have admirers.
On this white night the two of us,
Having settled on your windowsill,
Are looking down from your skyscraper.
Streetlights like gas butterflies,
Morning touched by a first tremor.
What I am softly telling you
Is so much like the sleeping distance!
We are gripped by the very same
Timid loyalty to the secret
As Petersburg spreading its panorama
Beyond the boundless river Neva.
Far off at the dense confines,
On this white night in the spring,
Nightingales fill the forest’s limits
With their thunderous hymns of glory.
The crazy trilling surges, rolls,
The voice of the little homely bird
Awakens ecstasy and turmoil
In the depths of the enchanted wood.
In those parts, night, the barefoot pilgrim,
Making her way along the fence,
Draws after her from the windowsill
A trail of overheard conversation.
To the echoes of talk heard aloud,
In orchards fenced with wooden palings,
Bending apple and cherry boughs
Clothe themselves in whitish flowers.
And the trees, like white apparitions,
Pour in a crowd out to the road,
Waving as if to bid farewell
To the white night that has seen so much.
5
Bad Roads in Spring
Sunset’s fires were burning down.
A man on horseback dragged himself
Over a bad road through the pines
To a far-off farmstead in the Urals.
The horse’s spleen was tossed about,
The splashing of its iron shoes
Was echoed in its wake by water
In the sinkholes of the springs.
When the rider dropped the reins
And went on at a walking pace,
The flooding waters spread nearby
With all their roar and rumbling.
Someone laughed, someone wept,
Stone against stone crashed and crumbled,
Tree stumps torn out by the root
Toppled into the whirling pools.
And at sunset’s conflagration,
In the far-off, blackened branches,
Like the tolling of the tocsin,
A nightingale sang furiously.
Where the widowed willow bowed
Her headdress over the ravine,
Like old Nightingale the Robber,
He whistled in the seven oaks.
What calamity, what ladylove
Was this ardor destined for?
At whom did he fire off his load
Of grapeshot in the thickset wood?
A demon, he seemed, about to step
From the camp of fugitives from hard labor
And go to meet the local posts
Of partisans, mounted or on foot.
Earth and sky, forest and field
Tried to snare this rarest sound,
These measured shares of madness, pain,
Happiness, and suffering.
6
A Final Talk
Life has come back as causelessly
As once it was strangely broken off.
I am here on the same old street
As then, that summer day and hour.
The same people and the cares the same,
And the fire of sunset not yet cooled,
As when death’s evening hastily
Nailed it to the wall of the Manège.
Women in cheap workday clothes
In the same way wear out their shoes at night.
And later the garrets crucify them
In the same way on the iron roofs.
Here one with a weary gait
Slowly emerges on the threshold
And, climbing up from the half basement,
Goes diagonally across the yard.
I again ready my excuses,
And again it’s all the same to me.
And the neighbor woman skirts the backyard,
Leaving the two of us alone.
———
Don’t cry, don’t pucker your swollen lips,
Don’t gather them in wrinkles.
You’ll reopen the dried-up scab
Of your spring fever sore.
Take your palm off of my breast,
We are high-tension wires,
Watch out, or by accident we may be
Thrown together again.
Years will pass, you will get married,
And forget all this disorder.
To be a woman is a giant step,
To drive men mad—heroic.
While at the miracle of a woman’s arms,
Shoulders, and back, and neck,
I’ve stood in reverence all my life
Like a devoted servant.
But howsoever night may bind me
With its anguished coil,
Strongest of all is the pull away,
The passion for a clean break.
7
Summer in Town
Talk in half whispers,
And with fervent haste
She gathers her hair up
In a shock from the nape.
A woman in a helmet
Looks from under the big comb,
Tossing back her head
With its braids and all.
But the night outside is hot
And promises bad weather,
And, shuffling as they pass,
Pedestri
ans head for home.
Abrupt thunder comes
With sharp reverberations,
And the wind flutters
The curtains of the windows.
A hushed stillness follows,
But it’s sultry as before,
And lightning as before
Rummages in the sky.
And when the intense, radiant
Morning heat dries up
The puddles on the boulevards
After the night’s downpour,
The still-flowering lindens,
Fragrant, centuries old,
Look gloweringly around them,
Having had too little sleep.
8
Wind
I’m no more, but you’re still alive,
And the wind, complaining, weeping,
Sways the forest and the dacha,
Not each pine tree separately,
But all in their entirety,
With all the boundless distances,
Like the hulls of sailing ships
On the smooth surface of a harbor.
And it’s not out of mere bravado,
Nor out of pointless fury, but
So as in anguish to find words
To make for you a lullaby.
9
Hops
Under a willow twined with ivy
We seek shelter from the rain.
Our shoulders are covered by a raincoat,
And my arms are twined about you.
I was wrong. These thick bushes
Are wound not with ivy, but with hops.
Better, then, let’s take this raincoat
And spread it out wide under us.
10
Indian Summer
The currant leaf is coarse as canvas,
There’s laughter in the house and the clink of glass,
There’s chopping there, and pickling, and peppering,
And cloves are put into the marinade.
The forest, like a scoffer, flings this noise
As far away as the precipitous slope
Where the hazel grove burnt by the sun
Looks as if a bonfire’s heat had scorched it.
Here the road descends into a gully,
Here you feel pity for the dry old snags
And for the poor ragpicker, Mistress Autumn,
Who sweeps it all down into the ravine.
And because the universe is simpler
Than some clever thinker might suppose,
Because the grove is feeling so crestfallen,
Because it is all coming to its end.
Because it is senseless to stand blinking
When everything before you is burnt down,
And the white autumnal soot
Draws its cobwebs across the window.
There’s a way from the garden through the broken fence,
And it loses itself among the birches.
Inside there’s laughter and the noise of housework,
And the same noise and laughter far away.
11
A Wedding
Cutting through the yard outside,
Guests came to make merry
In the bride’s house until dawn
With a concertina.
Back behind the masters’ doors,
Doubled with felt lining,
The snatches of small talk died down
Between one and seven.
Just at dawn, the deep of sleep,
Slumber, slumber, slumber,
The accordion struck up afresh
Going from the wedding.
The accordionist poured out anew
Music from his squeeze box,
The clap of hands, the flash of beads,
The din of merrymaking.
And again, again, again
The chattering chastushka
Burst right into the sleepers’ bed
From the joyous feasting.
And one woman white as snow
Amidst the noise and whistling
Floated again like a peahen
Swaying her hips in rhythm.
Tossing back her haughty head,
And with her right hand waving,
She went dancing down the road—
Peahen, peahen, peahen!
Suddenly the heat and noise of play,
The stomping of the round dance,
Went plunging into Tartarus
And vanished in a twinkling.
The noisy yard was waking up,
And the busy echo
Mixed itself into the talk
And the peals of laughter.
Into the sky’s immensity,
A whirl of blue-gray patches,
A flock of pigeons went soaring up,
Rising from the dovecote.
Just as if someone half-asleep
Suddenly remembered
To send them, wishing many years,
After the wedding party.
For life is only an instant, too,
Only the dissolving
Of ourselves, like the giving of a gift,
Into all the others.
Only a wedding that bursts its way
Through an open window,
Only a song, only a dream,
Only a blue-gray pigeon.
12
Autumn
I’ve let the family go its ways,
All those close to me have long dispersed,
And the usual solitude
Fills all of nature and my heart.
And so I’m here with you in the cabin,
In the unpeopled and deserted forest.
The paths and trails, as in a song,
Are half submerged in undergrowth.
Now the log walls gaze in sorrow
At us alone. We never promised
To take the obstacles, if we perish,
We shall do it openly.
We sit down at one, get up at three,
I with a book, you with your sewing,
And at dawn we won’t have noticed
How at some point we stopped kissing.
Rustle, leaves, rustle and fall
Still more splendidly and recklessly,
Let yesterday’s cup of bitterness
Brim over with the anguish of today.
Attachment, attraction, loveliness!
Let’s be scattered in September’s noise!
Bury yourself in autumnal rustling!
Freeze in place, or lose your mind!
You shed your dress in the same way
A grove of maples sheds its leaves,
When you fall into my embrace
In your robe with silken tassels.
You are the blessing of a fatal step,
When life’s more sickening than illness,
Yet courage is the root of beauty,
And that’s what draws us to each other.
13
A Tale
Once in olden times,
In a faery land,
A horseman made his way
Over the thorny steppe.
He was hastening to battle,
And far across the steppe,
Out of the dust a forest
Darkly rose to meet him.
An aching in his bosom,
A gnawing in his heart:
Fear the watering place,
Tighten the saddle girth.
The rider did not listen
And rode on at full speed,
Going ever faster
Towards the wooded knoll.
Turning at the barrow,
He entered a dry gap,
Passed beside a meadow,
Rode over a hill.
And finally reached a hollow,
And by a forest path
Came upon animal footprints
And a watering place.
And deaf to any warning,
And heedless of his sense,
He led his steed down the bankside
>
To water him at the stream.
———
By the stream—a cave,
Before the cave—a ford.
What seemed like flaming brimstone
Lighted the cave mouth.
And from that crimson screen,
Which hid all from view,
A distant call resounded,
Coming through the pines.
Then straight across the gully
The startled rider sent
His horse stepping surely
Towards the summoning cry.
And what the rider saw there
Made him clutch his lance:
The head of a dragon,
A long tail all in scales.
Its maw was spewing fire,
Spattering light about,
In three rings round a maiden
Doctor Zhivago Page 64
