Monks approaching us from gothic horizons,
whose soul, whose spirit of tomorrow dies,
who confine love to your mystic gardens
to purify it of all human pride,
resolute, you advance down the roads of men,
eyes deluded by the fires of perdition
from distant times to our present day,
through ages of silver and centuries of iron,
and ever the same step pious and broad.
Alone, majestic, you survive a dead Christian world,
Alone with back unbowed you bear its load
like a royal corpse sunk in a coffin of gold.
Monks – seekers of sublime chimeras
your cries of eternity penetrate the necropolis,
your spirit is haunted by the glow of summits,
you are the bearers of cross and flame
around the divine ideal buried in the earth.
O monks, vanquished, unbowed, silenced,
O giants who tower above the din of the world,
who hear the only sound that heaven forged;
monks grown tall in exile and enslavement,
monks hunted down, but whose ruby garments
illumine the world’s night, and whose heads
fade in the lucidity of supreme suns,
we, the peaceful poets, we magnify your forms.
And whilst no pride today is victor,
and palm leaves are trodden into the muck,
monks, great solitaries of thought and heart
before the last soul becomes extinct,
my verses will build you mystic altars
beneath the wandering veil of a chaste cloud,
that one day this soul in eternal desire,
pensive, lonely, despairing, in the depths of pale night,
will rekindle the fire of your extinguished glory,
will dream of you still when the final blasphemy
like an immense sword skewers God.