Boris Pasternak

If I were know, it is real,
When breaking into outset, 
That lines with blood are merciless killers:
They fill your throat – you are dead! 

I would spurn, in the first thought’s instant,
The jokes with such real states.
But start was, still, so safely distant,
And so shy was interest…

But an old age is Rome, ancient,
Which to the nonsense on bad wheels,
Demands from actors not right accents,
But to be genuinely killed. 

And when a line is charged by senses,
They send a slave on stage’s flats,
And there, an art is finished, breathless,
And breathe the soil and merciless fate.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, May, 2001