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from Reed
Muse
When at night I wait for her to come,
Life, it seems, hangs by a single strand.
What are glory, youth, freedom, in comparison
With the dear welcome guest, a flute in hand?
She enters now. Pushing her veil aside,
She stares through me with her attentiveness.
I question her: ‘And were you Dante’s guide,
Dictating the Inferno?’ She answers: ‘Yes.’
1924
To an Artist
Your work that to my inward sight still comes,
Fruit of your graced labours:
The gold of always-autumnal limes,
The blue of today-created waters—
Simply to think of it, the faintest drowse
Already has led me into your parks
Where, fearful of every turning, I lose
Consciousness in a trance, seeking your tracks.
Shall I go under this vault, transfigured by
The movement of your hand into a sky,
To cool my shameful heat?
There I shall become forever blessed,
There my burning eyelids will find rest,
And I’ll regain a gift I’ve lost—to weep.
1924
The Last Toast
I drink to our demolished house,
To all this wickedness,
To you, our loneliness together,
I raise my glass—
And to the dead-cold eyes,
The lie that has betrayed us,
The coarse, brutal world, the fact
That God has not saved us.
1934
Dust smells of a sun-ray,
Girls’ breaths,—violets hold,
Freedom clings to the wild honey,
But there’s no smell to gold.
The mignonette smells of water,
Apple-tang clings to love,
But we were always taught that
Blood smells only of blood.
So it was no use the governor from Rome
Washing his hands before the howls
Of the wicked mob,
And it was in vain
That the Scottish queen washed the scarlet
Splashes from her narrow palms
In the thane’s gloomy suffocating home.
. . .
Some gaze into tender faces,
Others drink until morning light,
But all night I hold conversations
With my conscience who is always right.
I say to her: ‘You know how tired I am,
Bearing your heavy burden, many years.’
But for her, there is no such thing as time,
And for her, space also disappears.
And again, a black Shrove Tuesday,
The sinister park, the unhurried ring
Of hooves, and, flying down the heavenly
Slopes, full of happiness and joy, the wind.
And above me, double-horned and calm
Is the witness . . . O I shall go there,
Along the ancient well-worn track,
To the deathly waters, where the swans are.
1936
Boris Pasternak
He who compared himself to the eye of a horse,
Peers, looks, sees, recognizes,
And instantly puddles shine, ice
Pines away, like a melting of diamonds.
Backyards drowse in lilac haze. Branch-
Line platforms, logs, clouds, leaves . . .
The engine’s whistle, watermelon’s crunch,
A timid hand in a fragrant kid glove. He’s
Ringing, thundering, grinding, up to his breast
In breakers . . . and suddenly is quiet . . . This means
He is tiptoeing over pine needles, fearful lest
He should startle space awake from its light sleep.
It means he counts the grains in the empty ears,
And it means he has come back
From another funeral, back to Darya’s
Gorge, the tombstone, cursed and black.
And b...
