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The Nobel Prize

I'm caught like a beast in a trap,
Somewhere there's freedom, people, light,
but the hunt is after me,
and there's no way out.
The dark forest and the pool bank,
a log of a felled fir tree,
My way is completely cut off,
I am resigned to my fate.
What came over me,
am I dirty and evil?
I made the whole world cry
about the beauty of my land.
The ring of hunters tightens . . .
My guilt hurts another -
I have lost my right hand,
my heart's friend is not with me.
I wish that right hand of mine
would wipe my tears,
 when the noose is round my neck
 and the hour of death is close.
0 Lord, you created the swift swallow
   that burns in the dawn, twitters, flies
and swoops - why did you inspire your appetite
   into a dozen condemned men?
How shall I quench my thirst? How can I force the terrible morning
  to turn red, when there is nothing
but the idol and the fate of the red guard
  in this terrible morning - or?
We forgot the original inspired yellow dawn
  after all this redness.
What are you? What skies have you crossed over to?
  You are not here in these Russian skies.

  The Soul

 my soul, comforter
 of all around me,
 you have become the burial vault
for those tortured alive.
You slap myrrh on their bodies
when you dedicate poems to them.
You mourn them
with a weeping lyre.
In our murderous times
you are funeral urn
preserving their ashes
for conscience and for terror's sake.
Their combined tortures
bowed you to the ground.
You smell of the dust of corpses
in Egyptian tombs.
My soul, frail vessel,
you ground everything you saw,
like a mill and turned
and mixed them it all in.
Boris Pasternak


The Nobel Prize
I'm caught like a beast in a trap,
Somewhere there's freedom, people, light,
but the hunt is after me,
and there's no way out.
Giải thưởng Nobel
Tôi, giống con con thú sập bẫy
Ở đâu đó, có tự do, có con người, có ánh sáng,
nhưng cuộc săn theo sát nút
và chẳng có đường thoát.
The Soul
my soul, comforter
of all around me,
 you have become the burial vault
for those tortured alive.
Linh hồn
linh hồn của ta ơi,
mi an ủi, vỗ về mọi thứ quanh ta,
mi trở thành hầm mộ
cho tất cả những kẻ bị tra tấn, vưỡn còn sống.