About These Poems

by Boris Pasternak in 1917
O
	N pavements I shall trample themO
	...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 a 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 it 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.
	It just is, and they are they. And what is was without dismay....