Here's the best winter words I know. (by the way, I enjoyed your photos Bean...and I luv pure maple syrup!)
WINTER NIGHT
(from Doctor Zhivago)
by Boris Pasternak
Snow, snow, all the world over,
Snow to the world's end swirling,
A candle was burning on the table,
A candle was burning.
As midges swarming in summer
Fly to the candle flame,
The snowflakes swarming outside
Flew at the window frame.
The blizzard etched on he window
Frosty patterning.
A candle was burning on the table,
A candle was burning.
The lighted ceiling carried
A shadow frieze:
Entwining hands, entwining feet,
Entwining destinies.
And two little shoes dropped,
Thud, from the mattress.
And candle wax like tears dropped
On an empty dress.
And all was lost in a tunnel
Of grey snow churning.
A candle was burning on the table,
A candle was burning.
And when a draught flattened the flame,
Temptation blazed
And like a fiery angel raised
Two cross-shaped wings.
All February the snow fell
And sometimes till morning
A candle was buring on the table,
A candle was burning.
1948
SNOW IS FALLING
Snow is falling, snow is falling,
Reaching for the storm's white stars,
Petals of geraniums stretch
Beyond the window bars.
Snow is falling, all is chaos,
Everything is in the air,
The angle of the crossroads,
The steps of the back stair.
Snow is falling, not like flakes
But as if the firmament
In a coat with many patches
Were making its descent.
As if, from the upper landing,
Looking like a lunatic,
Creeping, playing hide-and-seek,
The sky stole from the attic.
Because life does not wait,
Turn, and you find Christmas here.
And a moment after that
It's suddenly New Year.
Snow is falling, thickly, thickly,
Keeping step, stride for stride,
No less quickly, nonchalantly,
Is that time, perhaps,
Passing in the street outside?
And perhaps year follows year
Like the snowflakes falling
Or the words that follow here?
Snow is falling, snow is falling,
Snow is falling, all is chaos:
The whitened ones who pass,
The angle of the crossroads,
The dazed plants by the glass.
Boris Pasternak, 1957
AFTER THE BLIZZARD
After the blizzard has dwindled,
Tranquility comes here today.
I listen to children's voices
Beyond the river at play.
No, surely, I must be mistaken,
I'm blind, I'm on the wrong track.
Like a dead white woman of plaster
Winter lies flat on her back.
The sky is admiring the moulding
Of eyelids forever pressed shut.
Snow covers everything: yard and twig
And the tree's most diminutive shoot.
The river ice, crossing, and platform,
The forest, embankment and track
Have been cast in immaculate forms
With no jutting corner or crack.
At night, when I can't get to sleep,
Revelation leaps up from the sofa
To fit the whole world in a page,
To accomodate all in a stanza;
As tree stumps and tree roots are sculpted,
And the riverside bushes below,
To build the roofs' seascape on paper,
The whole town, the whole world in snow.
Boris Pasternak, 1956
All poems © respective dates by Boris Pasternak;
© 1983 by Peter France (translation)
