Boris Pasternak

10 February 1890 - 30 May 1960 / Moscow

The Swifts (1)

The swifts have no strength any more to retain,
To check the light-blue evening coolness.
It burst from their breasts, from their throats, under strain
And flows out of hand in its fullness.

There is not a thing that could stop them, up there,
From shrilly, exultedly crying,
Exclaiming: The earth has made off to nowhere,
O look! It has vanished - O triumph!

As cauldrons of water are ended in steam
When quarrelsome bubbles are rising -
Look - there is no room for the earth - from the seam
Of the gorge to the drawn-out horizon!
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