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“Sparrow Hills” by Boris Pasternak 🇷🇺 (10 Feb 1890 – 30 May 1960)
Translated from the Russian
A breast kissed wet, as though under a shower!
But summer streams do not flow forever,
And we cannot stay on here night after night,
Raising dust to the accordion’s low drone.
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I’ve heard about old age—a frightening prediction!
No crashing wave will lift its hands to the stars.
Imagine: they say there is no face in the fields,
no heart in the pond and, in the forest, no God.
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Let your soul break free! The day bubbles like surf.
It’s the noontime of the world. Where are your eyes?
Look: high in the treetops, thought is a simmering mix
Of woodpeckers, pine cones, heat, needles and clouds.
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Here the track of the city trolley ends.
Machines are barred; pine trees will have to do.
From here on, it’s Sunday—a parting of branches,
A dash through the meadow and a slide on the grass.
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Weaving our steps with sunlight and Whitsunday,
The woods insist the world is always like this.
The trees believe it; the meadow understands;
It pours down from the sky across our laps.