Pasternak Poems XIX- XXV
Pasternak Poems
XIX
Cold and frosty, through
The columns of neo-classicism
One sees the seagulls and crows
Rifle through the black bin bags
And they scatter the entrails
Of unfinished pizzas, sardine
Tins and the like, they remind
One of the witches or the hags
Of Macbeth, meeting in cold
And frost, the steam from the
Mouth like dragon’s breath
It is the eve of the December
And the presence of Christmas
In store, now waiting to be lit
As one watches a man in sixties
Take one too many of the drags
From a cigarette down to the butt
He wears a beard, no Santa Claus
He has trainers, look of the homeless
One feels a kinship, it is hopeless
The gulls scuffle in the air over a piece
Duplicate job offers are sent to those
Without, it as if life were on the internet.
Pasternak Poems
XX
1955 has a certain appeal
As does a stratocruiser
It was a very cold year
Getting colder by the minute
What happened and how
It was something of a mystery
It is what they like to retail
The thriller of mystery and fear
But you try to interpret
Each occasion and location
You would think it was a murder
Rather than a strange conception
So you look back like James Elroy
But unlike his case, nothing to go on
Just the barest of detail
Each time you think you are closer
Something comes up and the thread
It goes cold, names and dates are wrong
Everything seems to be a fiction
Except for I guess the conception.
Pasternak Poems
XXI
A hand, it has a will
Of its own, it starts
With a friendly tap
Something innocent
Like well done on the knee
Then it moves to the lap
And then all those hearts
Beat irregularly, and all
What ensues is a blank
Then it is see you next week
Then it has gone, a memory
That is stored in an attic
In some deep recess or box
One is afraid to look in again
But some do, some die
Some go weird or insane
But most try their hardest
To be normal men or women
There, then is the tragedy.
Pasternak Poems
XXII
What if you woke up
And the sun did not shine?
You would freeze to death
Unless it was a metaphor
There is a world of conditionals
Which has you at a firing squad
Waiting for orders from Colonels
But it is thankfully only figurative
What if you woke up
And sun was not shining at all?
Your feet blue and you were chattering
But is fine nothing to worry about
Because according to the law
You do not get pneumonia outside
When the temperature is above zero
So smile and be thankful it is not a metaphor!
Pasternak Poems
XXIII
In restoration of the
Light, as moon has
In the ritual of the
Changing of the
Planetary bodies
Handed over the
Day to the sun
We think nothing
About the precariousness
Of our situation
As little flecks of substance
Attached to an orb
That spins and is controlled
By the fiery majesty of the sun
Instead we look at more sublunary
Issues such as the race at
Catterick and the going will
Be good and the BBC weather
Says it’ll be dry today but note
It may well become later breezier.
Pasternak Poems
XXIV
Sirens take all forms
Some are found in the sea
Some are in the history books
Some you see in the art gallery
Some are found on top of police cars
Some announce the end of the world
But many are found in advertisements
Next to the latest news about X or Y
Devils take all forms
Some are found in bottles of pepper sauce
Some are found in the sea as fish
Some are found on walls of remote chapels
Some are read in lovely long epics of poetry
Some are seen in the deeds of those in need
But many are found in governments
Next to those with funds and power.
Pasternak Poems
XXV
What golden or silver age
Do we travel to in a troika
From the time of the Rus
To the hope of the Perestroika
From the burden of language
Through literacy to the computer
Snow we see as we greet the poets
Who stand from the time of the principality
To the day when poetry is an installation
They greet us, each in their tongue
What did they write of but of the futility
Of the lot of women and men, how they long
For deliverance, for something like liberty
They wrote of love then, now it is of sex
They wrote of equality, now it is of money
How strange it is to travel through the epochs
And find that though our bodies and minds
Are roughly the same, our hearts in poetry
Beat more irregularly, as they do in life
What once people used to think was funny
Is now toxic, how the values have shifted
Some good and some bad left thankfully behind
Yet still as Romantics, Boris, we are uplifted
By the song of a bird, a kiss on the cheek
But then, think of how you cheated on your wife!