Boris Pasternak : False Alarm

From early morning-nonsense

With tubs and troughs and strain,

With dampness in the evening

And sunsets in the rain.

Deep sighing of the darkness

And choking back swallowed tears,

A railway-engine's calling

Down from the sixteenth verst.

Outside and in the garden

A short fast-darkening day;

Small breakages and losses

In true September way.

In daytime autumn's vastness

Beyond the stream is rent

By wailing in the graveyard,

By anguish and lament.

But when the widow's sobbing

Is carried from the bank,

With all my blood I'm with her

And see my death point-blank.

As every year I see it

Out of the hall downstairs,

The long-delayed approaching

Of this my final year.

Through leaves in yellow-terror,

Its way swept clear, I see

That winter from the hillside

Is staring down at me.

I usually don't like to add much commentary to a poem but wanted to just say a bit about this one. This is from a book of Pasternak's poetry edited by his sister, Lydia Pasternak Slater. In this she is talking about Boris Pasternak's funeral and the meaning of the lines "That winter from the hillside/Is staring down at me: "No use was made of the official van which came to transport the body; the open coffin was carried shoulder high, all the way from the house, over the field, to the road, over the stream and up to the three tall pine trees on the hillside. This was where he wanted to be buried. There he lies, and the picturesque pine trees look over the stretch of fields to his distant house, at his window, Boris thought his death was staring at him, as he described in one of his poems."