I keep thinking of times that are long past, <br />Of a house in the Petersburg Quarter. <br />You had come from the steppeland Kursk Province, <br />Of a none-too-rich mother the daughter. <br /> <br />You were nice, you had many admirers. <br />On that distant white night we were sitting <br />On your window-sill, looking from high on <br />On the phantom-like scene of the city. <br /> <br />The street-lamps, like gauze butterflies fluttering, <br />Had been touched by the chill of the morning. <br />My soft words, as I opened my heart to you, <br />Matched the slumbering vistas before us. <br /> <br />We were plighted with timid fidelity <br />To the very same nebulous mystery <br />As the cityscape spreading unendingly <br />Far beyond the Neva, through the distances. <br /> <br />In that far-off impregnable wilderness, <br />Wrapped in springtime twilight ethereal, <br />Woodland glades and dense thickets were quivering <br />With mad nightingales' thunderous paeans. <br /> <br />Crazy resonant warbling ran riot, <br />And the voice of this plain-looking songster <br />Sowed derangement, ecstatic delight <br />In the depth of the mesmerised copsewood. <br /> <br />To those parts Night, a barefoot vagabond, <br />Stole its way along ditches and fences. <br />From our window-sill, after it tagging, <br />Was the trail of our cooed confidences. <br /> <br />To the words of this colloquy echoing <br />In the orchards beyond the tall palings <br />Spreading branches of apple and cherry trees <br />Swathed themselves in their pearly-white raiment. <br /> <br />And the trees, like so many pale phantoms, <br />Waved their farewell, along the road thronging, <br />To White Night, that all-seeing enchanter, <br />Who was now to North Regions withdrawing.<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/white-night-3/
