The Wind(Four fragments concerning Blok)
1
Who’ll be honoured and praised,
who’ll be dead, and abused,
that’s only known these days
to power’s sycophantic crew.
To honour Pushkin or not:
perhaps no one would know,
were it not for their dissertations
that shed light on our darkness so.
But Blok, happily, isn’t like that,
his case is a different one.
He didn’t come down from Sinai
or adopt us as his sons.
Eternal, owned by no programme,
beyond systems and schools,
he’s not been manufactured
or thrust down our throats by fools.
2
As the wind: like the wind. Like the wind
that shrieked on the estate in those days,
when Fil’ka, the postilion still galloped
at the head of a team of six bays.
And grandfather was still alive
crystal-pure Jacobin, radical soul,
his gusty grandson close behind
by a fingerbreadth, and as bold.
That wind, that penetrated
under his ribs, into his spirit,
entered his verse, and was praised,
in good times and in evil.
That wind’s everywhere. The house,
trees, country, and rain,
in his third book of poetry,
in The Twelve, in death – the same.
3
Wide, wide, wide,
river and field stretch away.
It’s haymaking time
it’s communal work today.
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poem by Boris Pasternak
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