"Nohchh" NIGHT

As promised (threatened?) yesterday, a poem.

Boris Pasternak


Night runs with no hitches,
melting. A pilot
makes for the clouds
above a sleeping world; 

Drowns in a whirlpool
of vapour, dwindles 
to a cross-stitch;
a mark on linen.

Below are foreign cities,
all-night bars, 
barracks, boilermen,
stations, trains.

the shadow of wings
lies flat on clouds,
The stars
cluster, drift.

Sickeningly
the Milky Way
heels over to other 
and unknown worlds.


In limitless spaces
continents burn,
boilermen watch
in basement boiler rooms.

Under Paris eves
Mars or Venus
Peers at the posters
That name the new farce,

While, sleeples, a man
in the splendid distance
Peers from his ancient
and tile-roofed attic

at Venus or Mars, 
as if the heavens 
touched on the theme
of his nightly worries.

Work; watch;
don't waver; work.
Wrestle with sleep 
like planet and pilot.

There's no surrender
to sleep, artist, 
eternity's hostage,
captive to time.