Pasternak Poem

I'm not asleep at the wheel, as my old computer used to accuse me of, but rather busy on other fronts. However, I want to keep you coming back, so I must present you with something scintillating and wise, perhaps.

I read a lot of poetry; I write a lot of poetry; I teach poetry ... and out of the rich harvest recently of other people's poems, including 8 renga by my Chinese writing students (!), I have a gentle favourite - a translation of a Boris Pasternak (Russian, 1890-1960) poem, Hops:


Beneath the willow, wound round with ivy,
We take cover from the worst
Of the storm, with a greatcoat round
Our shoulders and my hands around your waist.

I've got it wrong. That isn't ivy
Entwined in the bushes round
The wood but hops. You intoxicate me!
Let's spread the greatcoat on the ground.


Translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France and taken from Making Your Own Days by Kenneth Koch.

Any discussion is really superfluous. You either like it or you don't.