Complete Poems (26 page)

Our beloved religion hallows our memorials,

hallows our death.

For the pagans’ gifts and ceremonials

and sacrifices she has no love.

Without any foolish offerings

of gold,

the most narrow bed of slumbers infinite

lies beneath the pity of Jesus.

Sorrow in Ilium, and lament.

                         The land

of Troy in bitter hopelessness and fear

for great Hector, Priam’s son, sheds tears.

The lamentation loudly, heavily resounds.

                                        Not a soul

remains in Troy who is not yet in grief,

who has no care for Hector’s memory.

But so much lamentation is utterly useless,

                                        foolish

in a city so ill-fortuned;

fate implacable is deaf as stone.

Priam, despising helplessness,

                         from his

treasury removes the gold; he adds

cauldrons, carpets, mantles; and

cloaks and tripods, a gleaming pile

                                        of veils

and whatever else appears appropriate,

and heaps them up inside his chariot.

He wants, with this ransom, to regain

                                        his son’s

body from his terrifying enemy,

and honor it with venerable obsequy.

In the taciturn night he leaves.

                         He says

little. Now his only thought is this:

that his chariot be swift, swift.

The road before him stretches gloomily.

                                        Pitiably

the wind laments and groans.

Far off croaks an ill-omened crow.

Here, the bark of a dog is heard;

                         a hare

passes over there, swift as a whisper.

The king his horses spurs, spurs.

The shadows on the battlefield are astir,

                                        sinister,

and have no idea why, in such a rush,

Dardanides is heading for the ships

of Argive murderers, and Achaeans

                         malign.

But the king pays no attention to this;

’tis enough that his chariot be swift, swift.

Stranger, by the Ganges here I lie, a man

who lived a life of lamentation, toil, and pain;

a Samian, I ended in this thrice-barbaric land.

This grave close by the riverside contains

many woes. Undiluted lust for gold

drove me into this accursed trade.

I was shipwrecked on the Indian coast and sold

as a slave. Well into old age

I wore myself out, worked until I breathed no more—

deprived of Greek voices, and far from the shore

of Samos. What I suffer now is not, therefore,

fearful; and I voyage down to Hades without grief.

There among compatriots I shall be.

And forever after I shall speak in Greek.

“I am leaving, leaving. Do not hold me back.

I’m a martyr to ennui and to revulsion.”

“But stay a while for Menander’s sake.

What a pity if you miss it.” “You insult me.

“Menander’s are they, then, these weak
données,

these unpolished verses, this childish speech?

Let me leave this theatre straightaway

so I can go home—with no little relief.

“The Roman air has ruined you utterly

Instead of condemning, you timidly

acclaim, applaud this uncouth—what’s his name?

Gabrence, Terence?—one whose only talent

is for composing those Latin Atellans;

yet nonetheless he hungers for Menander’s fame.”

Now they’ve come before Jerusalem.

Passions, avarice, and ambition,

as well as their chivalrous pride

have swiftly slipped from their souls.

Now they’ve come before Jerusalem.

In their ecstasy and their devoutness

they’ve forgotten their quarrels with the Greeks;

they’ve forgotten their hatred of the Turks.

Now they’ve come before Jerusalem.

And the Crusaders, so daring and invincible,

so vehement in their every march and onslaught,

are fearful and nervous and are unable

to go further; they tremble like small children,

and like small children weep, all weep,

as they behold the walls of Jerusalem.

D
ANTE
,
Inferno,
Canto XXVI
T
ENNYSON
, “Ulysses”

A second Odyssey and a great one, too,

greater than the first perhaps. But alas,

without a Homer, without hexameters.

Small was his ancestral house,

small was his ancestral town,

and all his Ithaca was small.

Telemachus’s affection, the faithfulness

of Penelope, the years of his father’s old age,

his old companions, the people’s unswerving love,

the blessed repose of the house

entered like rays of joy

into the heart of the seafarer.

And like rays they sank.

                         Inside of him

there awakened the thirst for the sea.

He hated the air of dry land.

Phantasms of the West

disturbed his sleep at night.

Nostalgia took hold of him:

for voyages, and early-morning

arrivals in harbors which,

with what joy, you enter for the first time.

Telemachus’s affection, the faithfulness

of Penelope, the years of his father’s old age,

his old companions, the people’s unswerving love,

and the peace and repose

of the house—they all bored him.

                                        And he left.

When Ithaca’s headlands

slipped away bit by bit before him

and he voyaged westward at full sail,

towards Iberia, towards the Heraclean pillars,—

far from every Achaean sea,—

he felt that he lived once again, that

he’d slipped the burdensome bonds

of things that were known and familiar.

And his heart, adventuress,

exulted coldly, empty of love.

He who fails, he who falls down low:

how difficult for him to learn poverty’s

new language and new manners.

Poor unfamiliar houses, how will he enter them!—

with what a heart will he go along the street

and when he finds himself before his door where will he find

the strength to touch the bell.

For the lowly need for bread

and for shelter, how will he say his thank-you’s!

How will he greet the chilly eyes

that reveal that he’s a burden!

His haughty lips, how will they now

begin to speak so humbly;

and his lofty head, how will he bend it!

How will he hear the talk that mangles

his ears with every word—and even then

you must make out as if you do not sense them

as if you are simple and do not understand.

Often, when I see them playing chess,

my eye will follow a Pawn

as bit by bit he finds a path

and finally reaches the last row.

He goes to the end with such eagerness

you’d venture to say that surely here

his pleasures and rewards will begin.

He encounters many hardships on the way.

Foot soldiers hurl their lances aslant;

the castles hit him with their flat

lines; inside of their two squares

swift knights wheel round

craftily trying to snare him;

and here and there, a threat at an angle:

across his path there comes a pawn

dispatched from the enemy’s camp.

But he wriggles out of all these dangers

and at last attains the final row.

How triumphantly he reaches it,

this terrifying row, the very last;

how eagerly he has come close to death!

For here the Pawn will die,

for this alone he has struggled.

On behalf of the queen, who will save us:

to resurrect her from her tomb

he fell into the underworld of chess.

                         At night, O Christ my Lord,

               protect for me my soul and my mind

               when about me there begin to roam

    Beings and Things that have no name

and they run with fleshless feet around my room

and make a circle round my bed that they might see me—

               and gaze upon me as though they know me

cackling voicelessly because they’ve frightened me.

                         I know it, yes, they lie in wait for me

               as though they were mulling over the foul times

when perhaps I crept along with them—in the murk,

entangled with those beings and with those things.

    And they’re frenzied to think those times will come again.

    But they won’t come again; for I am saved,

                         in Christ’s name I have been baptized.

                         I tremble when at night I sense,

               when I feel that there in the dense

               gloom their eyes are staring down at me.…

    Hide me from their sight, my Lord.

And when they speak or croak, do not allow

any of their blasphemies to reach my ears,

    lest it happen that they bring to my soul

some dreadful reminder of the hidden things they know.

Deeper, at the deepest part in the House of the Soul, Where they come and go and sit around a fire, The Passions with their women’s faces.

—R
ODENBACH

    In the House of the Soul the Passions wander—

               beautiful women gowned

    in silks, and sapphires crown their heads.

From the door of the house to its innermost depths they command

all of the chambers. Within the grandest—

               on nights when their blood is inflamed—

they dance and they drink with their hair unbound.

               Outside the chambers, pale and poorly dressed

    in a bygone era’s garments,

               the Virtues wander and in bitterness listen

to the merrymaking of their drunken companions.

To the glass of the windows they press their faces

               and, contemplative, they watch in silence

the lights, the jewels, and the blossoms of the dance.

… … … …

two slender trees

a little garden has;

and there the water makes

a parody of the land—

going into shoots

which have no mystery;

watering the roots

which have a sickly juice;

running into foliage

that, tied up with thread,

glum and melancholy

hang upon the windows;

and wanly washing off

the plants that in their pots

a careful housewife has

ordered row by row.

Rain, which little children

gaily look upon

inside a toasty room,

and as the water swells

and falls more heavily,

they clap their hands and jump.

Rain, which old men hear

with forbearance glum,

with boredom and ennui;

since instinctively

they have no love at all

for rain-drenched earth and shadows.

Rain, rain—ever more

violently comes the rain.

But I can no longer see.

Because of all that wet

the windowpane fogged up.

Upon its surface the

scattered drops of rain

run, and slip, stretch out

go up and then go down

and one of them will splotch

and one of them’s a blur.

And the street by now is hardly

visible in the mist;

so too, in a watery rime,

the houses and the carriages.

               Most beloved, white our youth,

               ah our white, our snowy youth,

    which is boundless, and is very brief,

    opening above us like an angel’s wings!.…

               It is all worn out, loves everything;

and melts away and swoons upon the white horizons.

Ah it goes there and is lost upon the white horizons,

                         goes forever.

               Forever, no. It will return,

               will come round again, return.

    With its limbs so white, its white allure,

    our youth so white will come to take us.

               It will hold us in its hands of white,

and in a fragile winding-shroud, of whiteness formed,

in a snowy winding-shroud of whiteness formed,

                         will cover us.

For different lands are rich in different crops and cattle; the horse distinguishes the Thessalian … but the product of this city is reason, and man.

—H
IMERIUS