Pasternak Time: “Sorry, I missed what you were saying” Sorry, I missed what you were saying. I was thinking of someone from another lifetime, Her stride across the courtyards of youth, Her tempting laugh and forgotten lines, Her sharp readings and fatal portraits, Her lasting illusions, and erstwhile friends. These dreamy thoughts came from something you said. Sorry to have drifted off. Something about a play by Chekhov, That would be it. We are conscious the way the mind moves off In directions of its own, like in Pasternak. Her mother felt the film was not the book. Felt? “A complete misrepresentation.” The book makes you see up front How a woman can follow a man Through life, even when she is long gone. Or will walk around the corner Of another city, just by coincidence. She went off in search of diamonds. Maybe she found a few, Interstate, overseas, under a rock. The life of the theatre, The theatre of life, interchangeable, O