TAMBURLAINE Comments

Fire wounds the deserts, their sands of memory.
Over this infinite, burning house only the stars look,
And I, the warrior, observe invisible metaphors in the horizon,
And I fall on my knees, I conjure the last light:
Let us dream here, let us keep here our shadow.
Up there, the world already marvels in astronomies;
Down under, the sky and the myth for the beautiful Zenocrate.
The invisible power of my glory for her dream
After the blooded dawn, after the insomnia
Of the blue and silver plain,
The sickly full moon fills with spots the bodies
And the waters,
The dark wood where the snow
Of the stars throws its darts.
But it rests in the eyes of the devil of light,
In the dawn returning
Like a tiger of fire in the sea full of rings
And here is death, and the death of the crownless kings,
The other shadow, day.
Fear burns on the gold coin on the snow.
Tamburlaine I am, under unceasing splendors.
Sometimes I see my beloved, the daughter of the sultan
Gliding in her sleigh
While the lakes of ice open
And the flakes of snow burst like ripe cherries
After the tireless, whitest reindeer.
Water resounds in the basements, in the cathedrals,
In the ears of the white valleys,
And in the passing torches and eagles,
And the bad illusions in the black, red, blue valleys.
Facing the dawn of mire and sparks the gods die
And their sick caravans sink in the seas,
In dusty woods, in rivers without shadows,
By the renowned kingdoms of my back.
I know I am far away, and this powerful light maddens me,
And even the dream has gone away from me,
But in afternoons of incredible beauty,
The remembrance of my beloved saves me from these raptures,
From these demons agonizing under my pillows,
And I imagine her in the sleigh breaking blue blocks of ice.
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