Boris Pasternak
M. 1s.'
Turning your pocket inside out,
You justly say: Search, probe, and rummage.
I'm far from caring how raw the mist
is.
What's done is like a wild March morning.
The trees in fluffy peasant coats
Stand rooted in brown gamboge soil,
Though probably the branches find
This covering difficult to bear.
1. The "M.Ts." of the title is the poetess Marina Tsvetayeva, whose work
Pasternak so greatly admired and with whom he became close friends,
largely by correspondence. "M.Ts." was written in 1928 when Tsvetay–
eva was living as an emigree abroad. In his autobiographical essay Pas–
ternak wrote of his sense of kinship with her: "a similarity of points of
departure, tastes and aspirations." Wilen he met her at an anti-Fascist
congress in Paris in 1935, she asked him whether he thought she and
her husband and children should return to Russia; her pro-Communist
family was pressing her to flee the loneliness and isolation of emigre life.
Pasternak did not know what to reply. "I was afraid that these remark·
able people would have a difficult and troubled time at home," he wrote.
"But the tragedy which was to strike the whole family surpassed my fean
beyond all measure." The family returned to Russia in 1939. Her
husband was arrested and perished in prison; her daughter was also
arrested, her son died at the front. Tsvetayava herself was exiled to a
small town where she could not find work, even as a charwoman. There,
she hanged herself
in
1941.
