White Night
A far-off time arises in my memory,
The house in Petersburg Quarters,
A humble daughter of the modest gentry,
Born in Kursk, you’re here taking courses.
You are cute, — you have many admirers.
This white night, it is only us two,
Sprawling out on your windowsill, tireless,
From your skyscraper, observing the view.
Streetlamps, like gaseous butterflies,
Trembled from morning’s first chills
And the words I whispered in quiet sighs
Resembled slumbering hills.
By some chance, we were caught here together,
By one mystery, in timid fidelity,
As the landscape beyond the Neva, –
Lands of Petersburg stretching unendingly.
In those distant, impregnable thickets,
On this vernal and pale white night,
The nightingales’ thunderous singing
Awoke all the woodlands in sight.
A frenzied chirping of pure emotion
From a little, soaring songster
Evoked both, passion and commotion,
From the depths of mesmerized forests.
The night, like a barefooted wanderer,
Moved there slowly in a leisurely walk
And behind it, from the windowsill, rambling,
Ran the trail of an overheard talk.
Within an earshot of our conversations,
In fenced enclosures of the garden,
The apple and the berry trees, with patience,
Put on the sunlight’s glowing garments.
And trees, like phantoms, seeming white,
By the roadside, stood in a line,
To pay their dues to the receding white night
That has witnessed so much in its time.
…………………………………………
by Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
translated by Andrey Kneller
