Boris Pasternak

Here you will find the Poem Ploughing Time of poet Boris Pasternak

Ploughing Time

What is the matter with the landscape?
Familiar landmarks are not there.
Ploughed fields, like squares upon a chessboard,
Today are scattered everywhere.

The newly-harrowed vast expanses
So evenly are spread about,
As though the valley had been spring-cleaned
Or else the mountains flattened out.

And that same day, in one endeavour,
Outside the furrows every tree
Bursts into leaf, light-green and downy,
And stretches skyward, tall and free.

No speck of dust on the new maples,
And colours nowhere are as clean
As is the light-grey of the ploughland
And as the silver-birch's green.