Old poet's song

author:  Notengolmo
5.0/5 | 1


An old poet enters a village
and after the exchange of a few polite words with the peasants
he sits down to sing.

The mediocre quality of the poet's verse
is obvious not only to him.
Still, he takes his lute out, and plays, and sings.

And half of a miracle happens.

The poet sings.
And a child who despised him just few moments earlier
as a boring prater,
watches him now with her eyes big and round
feeling the touch of unknown, unforeseeable secrets and promises.
(Secrets and promises:
never to be revealed,
never to be fulfilled,
but she doesn't know that, not yet.)

The poet sings.
And the workers who were not working on the road
stop, for a while, throwing obscenities at each other.
They become astonished and quiet for a moment,
a blessed moment.

The poet sings.
And another old man comes closer to experience once more
that eternal longing for what is far beyond
and yet fully of this world.
The old man feels again the perennial freshness of the grass
and powerful movements of the sea.
He again can be happy in the depth of unhappiness,
in the depth of the sorrow of his old age.

The poet sings.
And yet
deers do not come to listen,
trees do not come to bow,
mountains remain far away and silent,
and war will come.

Do we err much by claiming
it's not entirely due to the well-known mediocrity of that poet's verse?

During translation:


 
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