Doctor Zhivago (96 page)

And the peals of laughter.

Up into the boundless skies

Rose whirlwinds of gray patches:

Flocks of pigeons taking off

In fast flight from dovecotes.

Just as if some drowsy soul

Bestirred himself to set loose

Birds with wishes for long life

To overtake the wedding.

For life, too, is only an instant,

Only the dissolving of ourselves

In the selves of all others

As if bestowing a gift—

Only wedding noises

Soaring in through a window;

Only a song, only a dream,

Only a gray pigeon.

I have let all the members of my household go their ways;

All those close to me have long since scattered.

And everything—within the heart and throughout nature

Is filled with the loneliness of always.

And now I am here with you in the forester
'
s hut.

The forest is unpeopled and deserted.

Its trails and paths are (as the old song has it)

Half overgrown with grass and weeds.

We are the only ones now

For the walls of logs to regard in melancholy.

We made no promises to storm barricades;

We shall go down to perdition openly.

We will take our seats at one: at three we will leave our seats—

I with a book, you with your needlework.

And when day breaks we shall not notice

At what time we had done with our kissing.

Be noisy, leaves, as you flutter down—

Still more flamboyantly, with more abandon!

And raise the level of the gall of yesterday

Within the cup, by adding to it today
'
s yearning.

Attachment, craving, splendor of beauty.…

Let us scatter like smoke in this September soughing.

Bury all of yourself, my dearest, in this autumnal rustling;

Swoon, or go half insane!

You shed your coverings in much the same fashion

As this grove sheds its leaves,

Whenever you fall into my embraces

In your dressing gown with its silken tassels.

You are the blessing in a stride toward perdition,

When living sickens more than sickness does itself;

The root of beauty is audacity,

And that is what draws us to each other.

Once upon a time

In a faery realm

A knight was urging his steed

Over a steppe of burdocks.

He was most eager

To take part in battle,

Yet he could see through the dust

A forest looming ahead.

A nagging foreboding

Gnawed at his doughty heart.

(Shun the water hole—

Tighten saddle-girth!)

But the knight, unheeding,

Put spurs to his steed

And at full tilt rode

Up the wooded knoll.

Then, from this burial mound,

He rode into a dry river bed.

Next, skirting a meadow,

He crossed over a mountain.

He veered into a hollow

And, by a forest trail,

Came upon a spoor,

Found a water hole.

Deaf to any warning,

Unheeding his inner call,

He led his steed down from a rise

To drench him at the stream.

By the stream a cave yawned,

Before the cave was a ford;

Flaming brimstone seemed

To light the cavern
'
s mouth.

From behind the crimson smoke

That screened everything from sight

A far-off cry came echoing

Through the towering pines.

The knight, startled,

Dashed off straight ahead,

Racing through the ravine

In answer to this cry for help.

And the knight beheld

A dread dragon
'
s head,

And its scales and tail—

And gripped his lance hard.

Flaming at its maw,

The dragon scattered light like seed.

Its spine was wound in a triple coil

Around a maid.

The great serpent
'
s neck

Flicked like the tip of a whip

Over the white shoulders

Of his fair captive.

For that country
'
s custom

Gave up to this forest monster

A beautiful young creature

As its prey.

The people of that region

Paid this tribute to save

Their wretched huts and hovels

From the great worm
'
s wrath.

Its body bound her arms

And was wound about her throat:

It had accepted this sacrifice

To torture as it willed.

With his eyes turned up to heaven

The knight implored its aid

And ready to give battle

Aimed his lance at full tilt.

Tightly closed eyelids.

Towering heights. And clouds.

Waters. Fords. And rivers.

Years. And countless ages.

The knight in dented helmet

Lies unhorsed in the battle.

His faithful steed
'
s hoofs trample

The life out of the serpent.

Steed and dragon carcass

Lie together on the sand.

The knight lies there unconscious.

The maid is in a swoon.

The noontide vault of heaven

Is radiant and blue.

Who is this maid? A princess?

Bred to the land? Or to the purple born?

Tears from excess of joy

Course down her cheeks in streams.

Then her soul is overcome

By sleep and oblivion.

He feels he is recovering,

Then cannot stir a limb—

So great his loss of blood,

So much his strength is spent.

Yet both their hearts are beating.

By turns he and she

Strain to come to,

Only to sleep again.

Tightly closed eyelids.

Towering heights. And clouds.

Waters. Fords. And rivers.

Years. And countless ages.

The sun, keeping its promise without deception,

Had penetrated early in the morning,

Tracing a saffron streak obliquely

From the window curtains to the divan.

The same sun splashed with sultry ocher

The woods near by, the hamlet
'
s houses,

My bed, my dampened pillow

And the watt
'
s angle near the bookshelf.

I have recalled the very reason

For the slight dampness of my pillow.

I had dreamt that all of you were trailing

Through the woods, coming to see me off.

There was a crowd of you, yet you were straggling. Suddenly

Someone recalled: according to the Old Style

It was the sixth of August—

The Lord
'
s Transfiguration.

On this day, usually, a light without a flame

Issues from Mount Tabor, and Autumn,

Refulgent as an oriflamme,

Draws all eyes by its many glories.

And you traversed the stunted, beggared,

Denuded, quaking scrubwood of the alders

And entered the cemetery coppice

Of flaring red and ornate as a ginger bunny.

The sky was pompously playing neighbor

To the unstirring treetops, while the distance

Was clamorous with the exchange

Of long-drawn clarion calls of roosters.

Death stood like a state surveyor

Within God
'
s acre in this forest, scanning

My lifeless face, as if in thought

How best to dig my grave to proper measure.

All of you heard (not inwardly but with your sense of hearing)

The calm voice of someone close beside you.

That voice had been mine once, a fatidic voice.

It sounded now, untouched by death
'
s corruption:

"
Farewell to Transfiguration
'
s azure

And to the Second Coming
'
s gold!

Abate, with a last womanly caress,

The bitterness to me of this predestined hour.

Farewell to years of timelessness.

Let us part now, you who threw

Your woman
'
s gauntlet to an abyss of degradations:

I am the arena of your ordeal.

Farewell, broad sweep of outspread wings,

Farewell to willfulness of soaring,

And to the image of the world through words made manifest,