In honor of National Poetry Month in the US (April), I thought I'd start a new poetry thread...it's been awhile.
ABOUT THESE POEMS
by Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
On pavements I shall trample them
With broken glass and sun in turn.
In winter I shall open them
For the peeling ceiling to learn.
The garret will start to declaim
With a bow to the window frame.
Calamities, eccentricities
Will leapfrog to the cornices.
The blizzard will not month after month
Scour ends and beginnings with snow.
I shall remember: there is the sun.
And see: the light changed long ago.
When Christmas with a jackdaw glint
Peeps out, the day will suddenly
Brighten, revealing many things
Unnoticed by my love and me.
Shielding my face at the window
And scarfed against the rasping air,
I shall shout to the kids: Hey, you,
What century is out there?
Who beat a pathway to the door,
To the entrance walled up with snow,
While I was smoking with Byron
And drinking with Edgar Poe?
Received in Darial as a friend,
As in the armoury or hell,
I dipped my life, like Lermontov's
Passion, like lips in alcohol.
1917
from Selected Poems, © 1983 by Peter France
Your Happy Epeolatrist!
