PRELUDE
I
would like to stay between the empty dark, cruelty on earth hurts my
senses, life an affliction. Flailing love has turned my insides bitter,
memories long deserted rise again, pounding my shores. Howling wolves
at night crowd the snowy desert.
Movement,
tiresome sign of reality, respects my fantastic asylum. I will have
scaled it arm & arm with death. Death is a pale Beatrice, floating
high above the flood of the moon. She will visit the sea of my grief,
beneath her spell I will rest eternally, no longer lament beauty nor
impossible love.
Translated
by Cedar Sigo & Sara Bilandzija
+++
THE FUGITIVE
I
was sprinting forward with throbbing feet, emptiness ahead. Hail the
rain upon black ground. I was hoping to take shelter in a forest of
birch trees, thrashed from the storm. I hid awhile in the hole of an
upturned tree. Roots arranged in a crown of defense against the brown
bear. I sent away the bats with my bloody fists & screams. I was
stunned by a blow to the head. Hallucination turned to nightmare in
my hiding place. The only escape I knew was further on.
I
crossed mud covered in huge reeds, entering a second desert. I held
off on starting a fire for fear of being caught. I slept buried in the
cold. I could barely make out the shape of the messengers, bringing
word from higher up. They followed me on horseback with their black
dogs, fire in their eyes & rabid barking. The riders boasted a squirrel's
tail.
I
divined upon crossing the borders the light of my asylum & ran to
crouch at the feet of God. The icon listens with eyes down & smiles
sweetly.
Translated
by Cedar Sigo & Sara Bilandzija
+++
VALDEMAR'S DAUGHTER
The
pines appear humble at the foot of the palace that was raised with the
exaltation of birds of prey by arrogant men. Its hulk conceals for some
time the ascent of the moon after it has evaded the ridge of the mountain.
Its imposing fabrication depresses the bold project of the Norseman,
who merely approaches in peace. It is in accord with the rugged place
where the torrent falls from the silent peak, frequented by eagles,
and where the mystery of the neighboring jungle reigns. It receives
from the mournful past a tremendous majesty that the prattling elves
disturb with the night’s favor.
The
concealed flower in a grove is not consumed with more misfortune than
the nobleman’s daughter in the modesty of the tower, very close to the
restless clouds in the flight of the glacial winds. She delays amid
the tempest with the daring of the bird in the vertex of a mast. She
alleviates herself from the frozen clime, from the desert landscape,
from the dark green tree with the spectacle of the snow. She then recalls
the white and cold marble that guards the remains of her mother, at
whose side she yearns to rest.
She
barely enjoys the company of the familiar deer, whose branched head
discourages the tender gala of the mountains and prefers the mirror
of motionless lakes. She has him under her feet when she rouses the
deep and tremulous anguish of the harp.
She
sings the amorous winter lament that attains funereal nuptials with
the earth; the wandering of the seafarers on the unpopulated sea; the
threat of the deformed fish and the mass of the ice floe; the shipwrecked
man’s fainting in the immense night; the white and fierce moon, a nuncio
of death.
She
escapes captivity by means of the mystical strength of the exalted and
solitary song. She cultivates the divine attribute in the manner of
the pious exercise that consumes life and hurries time. She awaits the
final hour with a melodious hymn for deserving in such a manner the
place that the country’s faith augurs amid the winged and errant souls.
Fortunate hope, liberal rescue from hard confinement: once free and
with the new form, she will follow the birds on the journey to the festive
and musical South.
+++
MYTH
The
king knows about the mutinies and disturbances provoked by the discontents
throughout the capital. At each step he receives a messenger of gloomy
semblance. He strikes up a startled dialogue regarding an ambiguous
piece of news.
The
sovereign imagines the devastation of a fertile zone and the extermination
of its farmers. A wild tribe has taken advantage of the kingdom’s confusion
and has invaded it in carts armed with sickles. Some shameless witches,
counselors to the savage caudillos, vociferate their prophecies
amid the black residue of the bonfires. Through the heated air a red
sun, of a warm country, is distinguished.
The
men of the wild tribe transport some leather tents on the backs of their
disfigured dogs, avid for blood, and establish themselves with their
women, throughout and comfortably, in caverns practiced in the ground.
They reserve the tents for their chiefs.
The
king consults in vain the remedy of the state with the old captains,
of pontifical beard and brief elocution.
The
prince, his son, ensues to interrupt the council, where a grievous silence
reigns. He invents the healthy means and recommends them in an easy
discourse. He possesses the virtual idea and the redemptive verb. He
has just left the company of the bewildered.
The
veterans withdraw ceremonious and hopeful and bind themselves to his
orders. The young man’s presence suppresses the fluctuations of victory
and neutralizes the rebels’ stratagem.
The
hero has faced the danger with the assistance of an enthused throng.
The
day of his return, the beautiful women intone, from the terraces of
the capitol palaces, a hymn of secular antiquity in praise of the rainbow.
+++
THE SWAN'S DAUGHTER
Goethe greeted the presence of Marie Antoinette in Frankfurt am
Main, a pause on the road from Vienna to Paris, with the only French
verses from his pen.
I
step off the paddle steamer and visit the Benedictine abbey on a peaceful
shore of the Danube. An affable young man referred to me the origin
of the building, facing a solitary chapel. The monks had built it at
the edge of the ancient civilization, undamaged from the vestige of
Caesar.
The
monks erected the abbey, expiatory monument, with the goal of eliminating
the outcome of a profane affection from the memory of men and they chose
the same spot where a pair of proud lovers threw themselves to their
deaths in the current.
The
monks facilitated the rescue of Vienna, besieged by the Muslim. They
went to the encounter with Sobieski, the hero of the primitive quiver
and the Homeric shield, and guided him to where the chieftain of the
infidels, assured of his victory, was freely conversing with his sons
over a Bokara tapestry.
The
young man described for me with sadness the monks’ neglect of the reverend
house, on a bitter day. The victors of a war were leveling the retinue
and the village with the straw on the ground and they were scattering
the enraged voice of their mechanisms of death in the desolate field.
The
young man assigned the origin of the hecatomb to Marie Antoinette’s
wedding and celebrated her whiteness in fervent terms, wherein shone
a chimerical love for the martyred queen. The last director of the pious
establishment divined the consequences of the nuptial journey and abstained
from glancing at the retinue. The ascetic had locked himself in a place
unscathed by the rumors of the sensible world.
The
young man finished the lively apology of his heroine by citing the epithalamium
of Goethe, the thinker who was a captive to the marmoreal beauty of
Helen and a believer in the return of her ghost.
|