Their hands swollen from clapping,
Bored by chants, people called for action;
Shapely bay trees heaved sighs,
While their limbs sensed bolts of lightning.
My Country was laureled and dark
With no place allotted, nor hour
For unexpected births,
When the Finger-of-God loomed above me;
Without giving account of worlds it creates,
It ordered me to live in life’s desert!
*
That is why from you . . . o! laurels, I took
No single leaf, nor its tiniest tooth,
Except a cool shade perhaps, above my brow
(Not due to you, but – to sun’s passing . . .).
I took nothing from you, o! you giants,
Except for roads overrun with wormwood, lichen, and cowbane,
Except for earth scorched with curses and tedium . . .
I went all alone and wander on alone.
*
Of those who turned to a past that’s obscure,
Yet beloved – I met more than a few!
I stabbed my sole on corroded spurs
On paths where spent shells used to fall.
Ofttimes an old Custom I would meet,
Its teeth bared at the dawn,
Its head covered in dust
To lengthen the night, not to sever dreams.
*
Women, into dead canons bewitched,
I met by the thousands – I was grieved
That so much grace – left me cold!
All this I touched with my passionless iris,
This and that marble hand,
I traced the cloth’s stony folds,
A night butterfly flew over their heads,
Trembled and fell . . . and they, half sleeping, were gone . . .
*
Nothing – I took naught to my heart’s core,
And became toward them, as they were, inert,
Courteous, as they were, and equally worthless,
Until bliss was harder and harder to know!
– Why? Why? In that Sunday’s excesses
Did I come to greet so many – say adieu? . . .
Clothing my heart in naught – safe attire –
To ask you – I will not, deign not: EXECUTIONERS! . . .
*
I write – eh! sometimes . . . BY WAY OF BABYLON
Or TO JERUSALEM! – my letters arrive –
I care little whether I blunder
Or not? . . . I write an artist’s account,
Ink-besmeared and inwardly hunched –
Errant! . . . but of course – utterly true!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
*
My son – will skirt this work, but you, grandson, will note,
What disappears today (because hurriedly read)
While print-Pantheism still reigns,
By virtue of the printer’s type in lead –
And, as would happen on a Roman street,
With catacombs’ paths under one’s feet,
Overhead the sun, and daylight sanguine yet flawed,
So will he read again what you read today,
And will recall me . . . when I’ll be no more!