MORTUA EST
Two candles, tall sentry, beside an earth mound,
A dream with wings broken that trail to
the ground,
Loud flung from the belfry calamitous
chime...
'Tis thus that you passed o'er the
bound'ries of time.
Gone by are the hours when the heavens entire
Flowed rivers of milk and grew flowers
of fire,
When the thunderous clouds were but
castles erect
Which the moon like a queen each in
turn did inspect.
I see you a shadow bright silver transcending,
With wings high uplifted to heaven
ascending,
I see you slow climbing through the
sky's scaffold bars
Midst a tempest of light and a
snowstorm of stars;
While the witches the sound of their spinning prolong,
Exalted in sunshine, swept up by a
song,
O'er your breast like a saint you white
arms crossed in prayer,
And gold on the water, and silver in
the air.
I see your soul's parting, its flight I behold;
Then glaze at the clay that remains ...
mute and cold,
At the winding-sheet clung to the
coffin's rude sill,
At your smile sweet and candid, that
seems alive still.
And i ask times unending my soul torn with doubt,
O why, pallid angel, your light has
gone out,
For were you not blameless and
wonderfully fair ?
Have you gone to rekindle a star in
despair ?
I fancy on high there are wings without name,
Broad rivers of fire spanned by bridges
of flame,
Strange castles that spires till the
zenith up fling,
With stairways of incense and flowers
that sing.
And you wonder among them, a worshipful queen,
With hair of bright starlight and eyes
vespertine,
In a tunic of turquoise bespattered
with gold,
While a wreath of green laurels does
your forehead enfold.
O, death is a chaos, an ocean of stars gleaming,
While life is a quagmire of doubts and
of dreaming,
Oh, death is an aeon of sun-blazoned
spheres,
While life but a legend of wailing and
tears.
Trough my head beats a whirlwind, a clamorous wrangle
Of thoughts and of dreams that despair
does entangle;
For when suns are extinguished and meteors
fail
The whole universe seems to mean
nothing at all.
Maybe that one day the arched heavens will sunder,
And down through their break all the
emptiness thunder,
Void's night o'er the earth its vast
nothing extending,
The loot of an instant of death without
ending.
If so, then forever your flame did succumb,
And forever your voice from today will
be dumb.
If so, then hereafter can bring no
rebirth.
If so, then this angel was nothing but
earth.
And thus, lovely soil that breath has departed,
I stand by your coffin alone
broken-hearted;
And yet i don't weep, rather praise for
its fleeing
Your ray softly crept from this chaos
of being.
For who shell declare which is ill and which well,
The is, or the isn't ? Can anyone tell
?
For he who is not, even grief can't
destroy,
And oft is the grieving, and seldom the
joy.
To exist! O, what nonsense, what foolish conceit;
Our eyes but deceive us, our ears but
cheat,
What this age discovers, the next will
deny,
For better just nothing than naught a
lie.
I see dreams in men's clothing that after dreams chase,
But that tumble in tombs ere the end of
the race,
And i search in may soul how this
horror to fly,
To laugh like a madman ? To curse ? Or
to cry ?
O, what is the meaning ? What sense does agree ?
The end of such beauty, had that what
to be ?
Sweet seraph of clay where still
lingers life's smile,
Just in order to die did you live for a
while ?
O, tell me the meaning. This angel or clod ?
I find on her forehead no witness of
God.
English version by Corneliu M. Popescu
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