A man is standing in the hall <br />His house not recognizing. <br />Her sudden leaving was a flight, <br />Herself, maybe, surprising. <br /> <br />The chaos reigning in the room <br />He does not try to master. <br />His tears and headache hide in gloom <br />The extent of his disaster. <br /> <br />His ears are ringing all day long <br />As though he has been drinking. <br />And why is it that all the time <br />Of waves he keeps on thinking? <br /> <br />When frosty window-panes blank out <br />The world of light and motion, <br />Despair and grief are doubly like <br />The desert of the ocean. <br /> <br />She was as dear to him, as close <br />In all her ways and features, <br />As is the seashore to the wave, <br />The ocean to the beaches. <br /> <br />As over rushes, after storm <br />The swell of water surges, <br />Into the deepness of his soul <br />Her memory submerges. <br /> <br />In years of strife, in times which were <br />Unthinkable to live in, <br />Upon a wave of destiny <br />To him she had been driven, <br /> <br />Through countless obstacles, and past <br />All dangers never-ended, <br />The wave had carried, carried her, <br />Till close to him she'd landed. <br /> <br />And now, so suddenly, she'd left. <br />What power overrode them? <br />The parting will destroy them both, <br />The grief bone-deep corrode them. <br /> <br />He looks around him. On the floor <br />In frantic haste she'd scattered <br />The contents of the cupboard, scraps <br />Of stuff, her sewing patterns. <br /> <br />He wanders through deserted rooms <br />And tidies up for hours; <br />Till darkness falls he folds away <br />Her things into the drawers; <br /> <br />And pricks his finger on a pin <br />In her unfinished sewing, <br />And sees the whole of her again, <br />And silent tears come flowing.<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/parting-12/
