Hamlet
The buzz subsides. I have come on stage.
Leaning in an open door
I try to detect from the echo
What the future has in store.
A thousand opera-glasses level
The dark, point-blank, at me.
Abba, Father, if it be possible
Let this cup pass from me.
I love your preordained design
And am ready to play this role.
But the play being acted is not mine.
For this once let me go.
But the order of the acts is planned,
The end of the road already revealed.
Alone among the Pharisees I stand.
Life is not a stroll across a field.
Boris Pasternak, trs. Jon Stallworth and Peter France
from Selected Poems (Penguin, 1983)
http://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2015/02/06/lifesaving-poems-boris-pasternaks-hamlet/
The buzz subsides. I have come on stage.
Leaning in an open door
I try to detect from the echo
What the future has in store.
A thousand opera-glasses level
The dark, point-blank, at me.
Abba, Father, if it be possible
Let this cup pass from me.
I love your preordained design
And am ready to play this role.
But the play being acted is not mine.
For this once let me go.
But the order of the acts is planned,
The end of the road already revealed.
Alone among the Pharisees I stand.
Life is not a stroll across a field.
Boris Pasternak, trs. Jon Stallworth and Peter France
from Selected Poems (Penguin, 1983)
http://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2015/02/06/lifesaving-poems-boris-pasternaks-hamlet/
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