Melancholy Poem by Peter Mamara

by M. Eminescu (1850-1889)

It seemed that a gateway was opened through the clouds
And the white queen of the night goes through it.
Oh you sweet and enchanting monarch of all the nights,
Rest in peace on the sky's arch — your cool mausoleum —
Amid thousands of torches, in a blue vault, and in a silver shroud;
The rich-in-boroughs-countryside is wrapped in white ice.
And town and fields are dressed in a shiny veil.

The air sparkles and it's like being whitewashed.
Buildings shine like ruins on a plain that is quiet.
The desolate graveyard with crooked crosses keeps quiet.
And a grey owl sits on a cross at midnight.
The steeple splinter and the wooden plate bang on the pillars.
And when journeying through the air, the see-through demon
Touches gently the bell with a tip of his wing,
So, one can hear a lament — a sad feeling.

While in ruins, the church stands pious, sad, empty and old.
And the wind whistles through the broken windows and doors.
It seems that it enchants. And one can hear its bang.
Inside it, on its pillars, on iconostasis that hang on walls,
Some gloomy shapes and shades are hardly left.

At times, a cricket spins a fine and vague belief, like a priest.
A wood mite digs into the old wall like a psalm reader.
And the religious paints — the icons in churches —
Stir their magic tales into my soul.
But from life's conclusion, from the storm's ramble,
Some sad shapes and shades are hardly left standing.

I look in vain into my tired mind to find my world.
For, a cricket charms hoary in a sad way, like in autumn.
I hold my hand on my sad heart in vain.
It beats slowly in a coffin, like the wood mite.

And when I think about my existence,
It seems to me that it flows slowly retold by unfamiliar lips,
As if it wouldn't be my life. As if I have not lived.
Who is the one who tells the story out of my mind?
I hold at it my ear. And I laugh at it. How much I listen
About faint pains… It seems that I died long ago.
(1876 September 1)
Translated by