MORTUA EST!

A watch-keeping taper above the wet mound,

At Mass-time a bell-roll with funeral sound,

A dream that is dipping its wing in sad gall -

And thus you've passed over the world's bourn, withal.

You died when the azure like pastures shines bright –

With milky white rivers and flowers of light;

Black clouds look like castles, so somber and stern:

The moon - nightly monarch - inspects them in turn,

Like silver-lit shadows to me you appear –

Their wings now preparing a skyward career;

Pale soul, you're ascending on scaffolds of clouds

Through showers of raylets and star-studded crowds.

A ray now uplifts you, songs take you to rest,

Your arms of white marble lie crossed on your breast.

While, noisily, witches keep spinning their skein,

There's silver on waters and gold o'er the plain.

I see your pure spirit borne upwards in flight,

Then watch the remainders: just clay... cold and white,

Laid down in the coffin in spotless white gown;

Your smile still surviving can match its renown.

I question my reason, which doubts mortify:

Oh, pallid-faced angel, why, why did you die?

What, were you not youthful and beautiful too?

Why reach for the starlets that sky-vaults bestrew?

But maybe you find there fine palaces built,

With star-spangled archways resplendently gilt,

With silver-made bridges and rivers of fire,

And myrrh-scented meadows which strike up a choir,

For you, dear, to pass through, oh, holiest queen,

With long locks of sunbeams, with eyes opaline,

Your noble pale forehead with bays aureoled –

Your raiment of azure bespangled with gold.

Oh, death is but chaos, a star-sea it seems,

While life is a fenland of riotous dreams;

Oh, death is like eras flowered with suns,

While bleak is life's story - it wastefully runs.

But oh!... On my thinking the storms put a cloak:

To bad thoughts submitting, the good ones I choke...

When suns are extinguished stars downwards are brought,

I'm led to believing that all is but nought.

The sky-vault above us may any time crumble

And Nought with its darkness may fall in a tumble,

Black skies I might watch, then, their universe sift –

To death sempiternal a prey or a gift.

Should things happen this way, should we there arrive,

Your gentle warm breathing will never revive;

Then your voice of sweetness stays silent for aye...

It means that this angel has only been clay.

Yet, dust most beloved, so lovely - though dead

-I lay on your coffin my harp - now a shred.

Your death I deplore not, but envy the ray

Escaped from this chaos - the world's disarray.

Indeed, who could answer? Whichever is better,

To be? To be not, though? But no truth is netter:

Whatever is dead is insensitive too;

The sorrows are many, the pleasures are few.

To be! O, sheer madness, both sad and futile:

Your hearing is lying, your eyes will beguile;

What one age has taught us, the others unteach:

Much rather than vain dreams, just nothing beseech!

I see dreams embodied race others which hide,

Until they reach churchyards with graves gaping wide;

I don't know in what way to quell my dark thought:

To laugh like the madmen? To mourn them I ought?

But wherefore?... Aren't all things sheer madness, indeed?

Why was, my sweet angel, your death so decreed ?

Where lies the world's meaning? So smiling and gay,

Did you, dear, live only to die in this way?

If this has some meaning, it's godless and odd:

Upon your wan forehead one cannot read "God"!

Translated by Andrei Bantas

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