Across my native fields and furrows
Across my native fields and furrows,
With me, behind me, foeman-sorrow
1910
Among the graves
Among the graves I stand, my cross upon my shoulder,
An envoy from the graves, words of dead prophets bearing,
And I reach to the distance, as far as eye is faring,
And everywhere that my free thought can venture boldly.
And I send forth a cry, from mound to mound unfolding,
Like whirlwinds' flight through the broad spaces tearing,
A cry, a battle-slogan from oath of age-old swearing,
That only dreams in harps, where songs enchanted hold it.
With a dying slave's last agonised death-rattle,
With the dark prayer of a mother-murdering sinner,
I seek the sun, the sun without end or beginning.
Let my soul be burned like tree-trunk felled and shattered,
Let my eyes wilt like frail lily-flower - no matter -
Only let my cross blaze forth with fire unstinted.
1915
Bees
My orchard's girt with tree-stump hives of honey-bees
That sing like music-makers with unending humming,
Their bell-song bellies out from summer unto summer.
To near and distant villages it flies forth constantly.
I tend the hives, smoke them, bless them as it should be,
In autumn-time I leave a mighty store of honey,
I watch in winter lest some parasite may come in,
In springtime, top and base I cleanse devotedly.
But when the time of swarming comes around - that day
The bees decline to settle where I built their arbour,
Off where another's blossoms bloom they swiftly stray,
And when I go for honey to the vat, my labour
Is all in vain... More trouble!...By my kinsman-neighbour
Just like the swarm, the honey has been whisked away!
1918
* * *
Cease dreaming of a past far-famed in story
Your dreams cannot revive it to existence,
Give all your life, devotedly insistent -
But you'll not welcome back those days of glory.
Your future is swaddled in darkness dreary,
With no bright gleam far in the azure distance,
It breeds secret despair - anguish persistent -
And in the heart black hopelessness grows sorely.
So, cast aside these phantoms and these sorrows.
Though the soul suffers, though the heart is aching,
Love the bright beauty of the future's morrow,
Yield your heart to what pranks the fates are making,
And, quietly working, your own pathway furrow,
And to bright future destiny, then take it.
1906
* * *
Closed in dreams, with pain for all time persisting,
We must experience, know all creation,
Study both human souls and aspirations,
And plan in silence an ideal existence.
We must suppress all that tempts us, insistent,
Which fate grants as a transient donation,
The future greet with trumpets' salutation,
Then vanish in oblivion's dusty distance.
We live only by fantasies deluding,
Although we have life and all its allurements,
Though we have souls, though we have hearts within us,
Merciless fate aye buffets us thus rudely,
We must roam life, heedless of how it stings us.
Drinking the poison that the slanderers bring us.
1906
For my native land
I take my flute, so long in slumber lying,
And try once more to make its voices heard;
Will they suffice, those shining thoughts and words,
Will its benevolent song soar, smoothly flying?
And I begin to play, with some fear lying
On me, though the song as of old is stirred
Chimes like breeze through the heather, and like bird
Its trills with the sweet nightingale are vying.
And still I wonder, how my song will seem, though,
To kinsmen-neighbours? Will they bless it, say?
Or in the bog to drown cast it away?
Yet, as my path I wander, sadly dreaming,
I shall play loud 'midst nightmare's secret looming,
For native land, my mother, I shall play.
1918
For the land of my forebears...
O land of those ancient forebears of mine,
There is naught in the world I'd not hasten to bring thee,
To the whole world I am ready to sing thee,
To raise thee up a throne on those graveyards of thine.
Happily with my soul I would breathe warmth within thee,
Or weave thee a crown from sun and stars' gold shine,
And crown thee with it, though for one moment's time,
For thee to shine in beauty all too hard for winning.
For thee in the fray I'd perish readily,
Against the wrongs heaped on thee by men and God, unkindly,
By the stranger and by thine own son in his blindness.
I will suffer endless griefs and woes eternally.
And for this I'll seek but one small thing from thee,
That thou'lt not drive me out, but keep me here abiding.
1912
I love
I love the first shoots that make our fields quicken,
And the meadows swaddled in fresh green,
And the forest sounds that sadly keen,
And a summer freshet's murmured trickle...
I love our village decked with mossy sheen,
Witness to all the wrongs on it inflicted,
Our people, like a flower wilted, stricken,
Dear to me is our country's every scene.
I love the sparkling eyes and the soft breast
And the lissom form of a fair maid,
Awake, asleep, think of her constantly,
I love - and cry out in my loneliness:
And the dry forest hears the cry I've prayed,
The cry: O who, O who is there loves me?
1912
I love thee, land...
I love thee, land, with all my soul I love thee truly,
I long to lean my soul on thee as on my darling,
I yearn to deck, adorn thee with bright crimson garlands,
I yearn with praise immortal to deck thee and endue thee.
With verdure and with light, thou gleamest with light, newly,
I see in thy expanses visions all-enchanting,
I see bright dawns of love and brotherhood true-hearted,
The heart cries out then: "God, what more is lacking to me?"
But, land, my dreams of thee all fade... My heart is weeping.
Instead of spring and sun, grim darkness meets my eyes now,
Cockle and boulder strew thy flowery fields with sorrow.
And in my soul... all strivings for love are soundly sleeping...
I have no love, land, for thee, though to God I cry now:
"Christ, whence has come this change?..
I plough a stranger's furrow".
1906
My companion
Behind me a corpse paces, skeletal and pale.
Like shadow with me, wheresoe'er I tread;
Whether I rise or lie in stupor on my bed,
A living stock, with me, it ever, ever trails.
Round me it has raised iron bars into a jail,
Turned into a prison earth's unbounded spread.
Suffer I or no - it makes all feeling dead,
Snakelike, crushed my breast with a hundred steely coils.
My faithful companion, I love you tenderly,
Not time nor human malice can gnaw thee, make thee less,
Though art my envoy, - sole, thou speakst of happiness
Whether I sleep or grapple with reality,
I'll not leave thee and thou'lt not leave my misery...
O hail to thee, all hail to thee, my loneliness!
1915
My native land
I'm bound to earth and sky by a thread wondrous strong,
Eternal gossamer that none can break or sever,
The earth caresses me, like her true son ever,
The bright sun holds my soul in its caresses long.
Even in my cradle I learned to know from song
Of all things close to me, of my home's narrow tether:
That I am but a millionth part from my field severed,
That the stars strike the sparks that bright in my heart throng.
Thus a native land I gained without strife or anger,
I grew with her, I'll not lay my bones among strangers,
I huddle to her close, as to my mother's breast,
And if someone should threaten me with harm or danger,
The threat upon my motherland is likewise pressed,
If he threaten her, I am the more distressed.
1915
My suffering
My suffering, my pain with anguish fraught,
What does it mean while millions likewise suffer
While hopeless groan and groan again they utter,
And tears claw at the eyes of all like salt.
Although my soul aspires to heaven vault,
And with my pleas against it ever batters,
So small my frenzied sighing - can it matter?
Faced with the whole world's prayers my cry is naught!
And I believe I am the least of creatures -
My conscience will not grant that I think other -
And yet somehow, it seems to me forever,
That this my suffering has no bound nor ceasing,
But in my life as great a sum it reaches
As all those millions suffering together.
1915
Not for you
Not for you does a fate like rosy morning
Gleam in the sky though storms of life are looming,
Not for you does hope rise in a new dawning,
Despair aye strikes her down and swift entombs her.
Tomorrow, house and bread - these are the gloomy
Thoughts you must tramp with your head drooping sorely,
To sweat for others and for self your doom is,
Then, weeping, to die hunger's death, forlornly.
Your song moans forth its threnodies of sorrow,
So that your woes before the eyes must hover,
That even now you change life for grave's furrow,
That o'er your land destruction's floods have gone, and
That others may dwell in their might forever,
You have no right even to die with honour.
1906
Off to the world
Off to the world, the world's far plains,
On thought-trail, on the wind's trail start.
To fight with sorrow, grief and pain,
Off to the world, the world depart.
Armour the soul with steel amain,
Tear flowers of feeling from the heart,
Rip love's illusion from the brain,
Off to the world, the world, depart!
And yet I have no wings for flight,
Though in my heart I long to soar!
Such bitter plight, such heavy plight.
On my home, Lord, thy blessings pour.
Mother and siblings there have I...
But why give us a heart, î why?
1906
Our husbandry
From ancient times we've been husbandmen in our land here,
Here we sow our furrows, pasture our flocks and herds
Here in spring with hope greet the migrating birds,
With hope in autumn wave off their departing bands, here.
From ancient times beneath a lord or a tsar's hand here,
We have gone forth to wars by foe or neighbour stirred.
Though for the blood we spilt of thanks came not a word -
Only our homes and crosses to the flames were damned here.
Thus in home and field our husbandry we practice,
Hoping aye for seed and crop that nothing mars,
- Vainly, as grass hopes for dew when summer chars -
Bringing forth our bread and others' bread in anguish,
Choking back the cry: how long must we still languish
Neath Warsaw of the lords and Moscow of the tsars?
1918
Out in the great world
Out in the great world, life chimes like a bubbling freshet,
The battle for bright fate and freedom blazes crimson,
Faith and hope maintain there constant their dominion,
Peoples are invited to life's more worthy session.
In the great world, heaven sows no teardrops stinging,
Injustice - that foul witch, frames no yokes of oppression,
Blinding darkness will not crush thought and expression,
Nor entice souls into traps, and to doom bring them.
Out in the great world, bells chime in all their glory,
People from their shoulders slough the cramping fetters,
From slavery's woes, they take a new path, sunward, better.
Out in the great world, all proceeds rightly, surely,
According to God's law, shining in bright glory...
But here, what do we here? Just set our chains a clatter.
1912
Reaping
The full-ripened figure of fortunate sowings
The reapers came hot-foot - and to-ing and fro-ing,
1910
The Belarusian
Behold, there passes by some shadow wasted,
From his lean shoulders a frieze coat hangs downward,
His grizzled head in rags of sheepskin drowning,
His crippled feet in bast sandals are cased.
Like furrowed field his face is lined and frowning,
Where gloom of mortal nature cast its traces,
His eyes lack life, tears' floods he oft has tasted,
And from his breast a rasping sigh is sounding.
A Belarusian this - he loves and suffers.
A Belarusian - into need's swamp, past saving,
He was brought down by darkness, that stepmother.
Tumbledown shack is all the wealth fate gave him,
Hatchet and ploughshare his life's aims - no other.
His respite from suffering - the inn, the graveyard.
1906
The deserted palace
Thy lord enfeebled long since ceased to understand
The lessons of great Sigmund's age, the years of anguish,
"Partition" drove him forth in foreign shade to languish,
Counting the fir-trees back at home on his own land.
And there at home, raised, furbished by so many hands,
The seat of noble generations flowered and vanished,
Bricks falling from thy rotten ceilings, lone thou standest,
And in the cracks the busy spider spins her strands,
The hungry "servitude" drives cattle in the park,
From year to year thy walls are veiled in superstition,
In thy wastes, fiend and coven dance in wild volition,
In every nook and cranny creeps destruction dark,
Gnashing its teeth: "My power and might rule here, so mark:
No life shall enter 'gainst my veto's prohibition!"
1910
To the court
To the court, o scribes, I yield myself to you,
Judge me with the statutes written in your code,
All my life in legal serfdom I abode,
Though I'd not let you crush my soul, nor will I do.
I passed by, ignored, your pharisaic crew,
I admit no homage to your idols owed,
If a groan of cursing fled my breast, its load
Was curse of self and snake of pain that gnawed me through.
Never sinned I sin that with your sins could vie,
To the lees I drank the cup of suffering,
Yet not once did it corrupt me deep within.
Only one sin on my soul like lion did lie,
Judge then this, my fault, a heart, a heart had I!
But, in truth can this be such a grievous sin?
1915
Twilight
I love to dream amid the dusk of twilight,
When the world puts on the night's black raiment,
And a bright star looks in my little casement -
O how I love the scenes that moment highlights.
A swarm of visions on my soul close weighs then,
Showing my fate, far blacker than the twilight,
Though heart is armoured 'gainst feeling's least traces,
Often a fleeting tear will cloud my eyesight.
I sit and dream and wait - but why this waiting?
Myself I have no answer to that question?
Perhaps until some better turn of fate, then?
Some day must bring me fortune in the offing,
And pain and grief will cease their long oppression?
Or only in the grave, the cold, black coffin?
1906
Why?
For the free spirit no measure or limits bound it,
Nowhere is barred to it, whither it cannot soar,
It will not perish or lose faith in self, though roars
Life's chaos, and dark universal shapes surround it.
It opens doors to hearts', souls' mysteries profoundest,
It learns what was not learned in the long years of yore,
Like phoenix from the ashes, it will rise once more
From the pit where beasts of darkness would confound it.
Mighty, eternal, from a million suns created,
Thunder and lightning in its hands, it will not fail,
Though the fire seethes it, though the frosty tempests flail...
Why do you count for naught, here, spirit of unabated
Strength, here where, their fetters chiming o'er their fate, a
Slave gives his fellow slave blood and fire in full scale.
1915
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Author: Janka Kupała - Janka Kupala
Biełaruskaja Palička: http://knihi.com |