It's Spring, I Leave A Street Where Poplars... Poem by Boris Pasternak

It's Spring, I Leave A Street Where Poplars...

Rating: 2.8


It's spring, I leave a street where poplars are astonished,
Where distance is alarmed and the house fears it may fall.
Where air is blue just like the linen bundle
A discharged patient takes from hospital,

Where dusk is empty, like a broken tale,
Abandoned by a star, without conclusion,
So that expressionless, unfathomable,
A thousand clamouring eyes are in confusion.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Michael Walker 02 May 2015

I like the poem a lot. The images of blue air and a patient leaving hospital are quite striking. 'Less is more' applies here-not too long or verbose. M. Walker.

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Simply beautiful - the scenes of spring in a cubic perspective.

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Terry Craddock 02 May 2015

It's spring, I leave a street where poplars are astonished, Beautiful, are the poplars astonished by the sudden start of spring, after a harsh cold winter, the transition from cold frozen ground to budding new life as the sap rises. Or are the poplars astonished by alarmed distances or because the house did not fall during winter storms or from falling down age. So many beautiful lines to lose ourselves within after a few readings. Loved this poem.

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Kim Barney 02 May 2015

Outside Russia, Pasternak is best known as the author of Doctor Zhivago (1957) , a novel which takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. Due to the novel's independent-minded stance on the socialist state, Doctor Zhivago was rejected for publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which forced him to decline the prize, though his descendants were later to accept it in his name in 1988. I loved the move based on that book, starring Omar Sharif as I recall, but I'm sorry, he lost me on this poem. How can you tell when a poplar is astonished?

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