BORIS PASTERNAK: Wind
Wind
(From "Four Fragments about Blok")
Who is to be sound and lavished,
Who – dead and be railed against –
Is known in our ‘parish’
To our supreme sycophants.
And perhaps none would have sensation --
Is Pushkin respected or not,
Were it not for their dissertations,
Shed light on the ‘what is just what’.
But Blok, as we all apprehend it,
Is different matter to us:
He wasn’t from high Sinai descended,
Didn’t foster all us as his sons.
He’s great out systems and lessons,
Without any program – esteemed,
Hasn’t been artificially fashioned,
And none has pressed us to love him.
Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, May, 2001