Oh terrible, beloved! A poet's loving <br />Is a restless god's passionate rage, <br />And chaos out into the world comes creeping, <br />As in the ancient fossil age. <br /> <br />His eyes weep him mist by the ton, <br />Enveloped in tears he is mammoth-like, <br />Out of fashion. He knows it must not be done. <br />Ages have passed-he does not know why. <br /> <br />He sees wedding parties all around, <br />Drunken unions celebrated unaware, <br />Common frogspawn found in every pond <br />Ritually adorned as precious caviare. <br /> <br />Like some Watteau pearl, how cleverly <br />A snuffbox embraces all life's matter, <br />And vengeance is wreaked on him, probably <br />Because, where they distort and flatter, <br /> <br />Where simpering comfort lies and fawns, <br />Where they rub idle shoulders, crawl like drones, <br />He will raise your sister from the ground, <br />Use her like a bacchante from the Grecian urns, <br /> <br />And pour into his kiss the Andes' melting, <br />And morning in the steppe, under the sway <br />Of dusted stars, as night's pallid bleating <br />Bustles about the village on its way. <br /> <br />And the botanical vestry's dense blackness, <br />And all the ravine's age-old breath, <br />Waft over the ennui of the stuffed mattress, <br />And the forest's ancient chaos spurts forth<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/oh-terrible-beloved-a-poet-s-loving/
