Unique Days

by Boris Pasternak

A Dream 

I dreamt of autumn in the window's twilight, 

And you, a tipsy jesters' throng amidst. ' 

And like a falcon, having stooped to slaughter, 

My heart returned to settle on your wrist. 

But time went on, grew old and deaf. Like thawing 

Soft ice old silk decayed on easy chairs. 

A bloated sunset from the garden painted 

The glass with bloody red September tears. 

But time grew old and deaf. And you, the loud one, 

Quite suddenly were still. This broke a spell. 

The dreaming ceased at once, as though in answer 

To an abruptly silenced bell. 

And I awakened. Dismal as the autumn 

The dawn was dark. A stronger wind arose 

To chase the racing birchtrees on the skyline, 

As from a running cart the streams of straws. 

White Night 

I keep thinking of times that are long past,

Of a house in the Petersburg Quarter.

You had come from the steppeland Kursk Province,

Of a none-too-rich mother the daughter.

You were nice, you had many admirers.

On that distant white night we were sitting

On your window-sill, looking from high on

On the phantom-like scene of the city.

The street-lamps, like gauze butterflies fluttering,

Had been touched by the chill of the morning.

My soft words, as I opened my heart to you,

Matched the slumbering vistas before us.

We were plighted with timid fidelity

To the very same nebulous mystery

As the cityscape spreading unendingly

Far beyond the Neva, through the distances.

In that far-off impregnable wilderness,

Wrapped in springtime twilight ethereal,

Woodland glades and dense thickets were quivering

With mad nightingales' thunderous paeans.

Crazy resonant warbling ran riot,

And the voice of this plain-looking songster

Sowed derangement, ecstatic delight

In the depth of the mesmerised copsewood.

To those parts Night, a barefoot vagabond,

Stole its way along ditches and fences.

From our window-sill, after it tagging,

Was the trail of our cooed confidences.

To the words of this colloquy echoing

In the orchards beyond the tall palings

Spreading branches of apple and cherry trees

Swathed themselves in their pearly-white raiment.

And the trees, like so many pale phantoms,

Waved their farewell, along the road thronging,

To White Night, that all-seeing enchanter,

Who was now to North Regions withdrawing. 

Unique Days 

How I remember solstice days

Through many winters long completed!

Each unrepeatable, unique,

And each one countless times repeated.

Of all these days, these only days,

When one rejoiced in the impression

That time had stopped, there grew in years

An unforgettable succession.

Each one of them I can evoke.

The year is to midwinter moving,

The roofs are dripping, roads are soaked,

And on the ice the sun is brooding.

Then lovers hastily are drawn

To one another, vague and dreaming,

And in the heat, upon a tree

The sweating nesting-box is steaming.

And sleepy clock-hands laze away

The clockface wearily ascending.

Eternal, endless is the day,

And the embrace is never-ending.