In Spasskoe, unforgettable September sheds its leaves. <br />Isn’t it time to close up the summer-house? <br />Echo traps the thudding of axe-blows in the trees, <br />and, past the fence, barters a herd-boy’s shout. <br /> <br /> <br />Last night the marsh by the park shivered, too. <br />The moment the sun rises it vanishes. <br />The bluebell can’t drink the rheumatic dew, <br />and a dirty lilac stain soils the birches. <br /> <br /> <br />The wood’s downcast. It wants to sleep, as well, <br />under the snow, in the deep quiet of the bear’s den. <br />The park, gaping, framed by tree-trunks stands still, <br />in neat obituary-columns, its edges blackened. <br /> <br />Has the birch copse stopped fading, staining, <br />its shade more watery still, and growing thin? <br />And again, you’re, fifteen – it’s still complaining – <br />again – ‘oh child, oh, what shall we do with them?’ <br /> <br />They’re already so many it’s time to stop playing. <br />They’re – birds in the bushes, mushrooms in the trees. <br />Already we’ve veiled our horizon with them, shrouding <br />each other’s landscape with fog-bound mysteries. <br /> <br />The comic, on the night of his death, typhus-stricken, <br />hears a peal: it’s Homeric laughter from the box. <br />Today in Spasskoe, the same grief, in hallucination, <br />stares, from the road, at a house of weathered logs.<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/spasskoe/
