a whirlwind of blue-gray patches—
a flock of doves spiraling up
suddenly from the dovecotes.
And to see them makes you wish,
just as the wedding-feast is ending,
years of happiness for this couple,
flung onto the wind like doves.
Life too is only an instant,
only a dissolving of ourselves
into everyone,
as if we gave ourselves as gifts.
Only a wedding, only the depths
of a window and the sound rushing in,
only a song, or a dream,
only a blue-gray dove.
--Boris Pasternak
