crazyben

For some reason I was thinking, just now, after editing yet another paper to submit to a biology journal (number 3 for the summer so far), of the poem "Hamlet" by Boris Pasternak. That poem astounded me when I first read it about 7 years ago. I remember racing through all the Russian poetry translations in the UCF library to see if any other volumes had anything remotely like it. None did, I thought at the time. The poem was so controversial that it was banned in the USSR until about 1988. When several poets (Andrey Voznesensky, and Joseph Brodsky, whom I think was principally expelled from the USSR for this) read it aloud at Pasternak's funeral they were arrested, tried and convicted of the crime of "being social parasites"-- in Soviet terms: their crime was being poets. Here goes:

"Hamlet" by Boris Pasternak

The murmurs ebb; onto the stage I enter.
I am trying, standing in the door,
To discover in the distant echoes
What the coming years may hold in store.

The nocturnal darkness with a thousand
Binoculars is focused onto me.
Take away this cup, O Abba Father,
Everything is possible to Thee.

I am fond of this Thy stubborn project,
And to play my part I am content.
But another drama is in progress,
And, this once, O let me be exempt.

But the plan of action is determined,
And the end irrevocably sealed.
I am alone; all round me drowns in falsehood:
Life is not a walk across a field.