I spent yesterday at the wedding of two close friends.
One of the poems read at the ceremony, a Russian poem by Boris Pasternak, stood out to me. And as with many good poems, although the words on the page are the same, their meaning can bend, stretch, and dance to meet the reader wherever they are.
In every thing I want to grasp…
1956
In every thing I want to grasp
Its very core.
In work, in searching for the path,
In heart’s uproar.
To see the essence of my days,
In every minute
To see its cause, its root, its base,
Its sacred meaning.
Perceiving constantly the hidden
Thread of fate
To live, to think, to love, to feel
And to create.
If I was able, I would write,
I’d try to fashion
The eight of lines, the eight of rhymes
On laws of passion,
On the unlawfulness and sins,
On runs and chases,
On palms and elbows, sudden somethings,
Chances, mazes.
I’d learn the passion’s rules and ways,
Its source and matter,
I would repeat its lovely names,
Each single letter.
I’d plant a verse as park to grow.
In verbs and nouns
Lime-trees would blossom in a row,
Aligning crowns.
I’d bring to verses scents and forms
Of mint and roses,
Spring meadows, bursts of thunderstorms,
Hay stacks and mosses.
This way Chopin in the old days
Composed, infusing
The breath of parks and groves and graves
Into his music.
The triumph — agony and play —
The top, the brink.
The tightened bow-string vibrates —
The living string.