Talk:Laza Kostić
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[edit] Poem
I am moving the words of the poem, because Wikipedia is not a repository for fictional works. Here it goes, for those interested:
Santa Maria della Salute
- Forgive me, O Holly Mother, I pray
- For mourning our mountains, stripped of pine,
- Those woods that became, despite our dark day,
- Part of Your Mansion, a Holy Shrine,
- And, Source of Mercy, forgive, as you may,
- This, my earthly sin, this guilt of mine.
- Repentant, I kiss the hem of your dress,
- O, Maria della Salute, Blessed.
- Is it not better to bear Beauty’s weight,
- Hold up your arches, solid as rock,
- Than to feed the hearths of the world’s hot hate,
- Burning to ash the heart and its bark,
- Than to sink like a ship, rot at a gate,
- Like the devil’s own fir tree or oak?
- So much lovelier the eternal rest
- O Maria della Salute, Blessed.
- Forgive me, O Mother, I’ve borne such hurt,
- Much sin I’ve repented and renounced.
- All my young heart had dreamed is but naught,
- Ripped up by the waking world, denounced.
- All that I yearned for, all hope my youth bought,
- Crumbled to ashes, dusty accounts,
- All in fulfillment of some malign jest,
- O, Maria della Salute, Blessed!
- Poisons, corruptions have hurt me within,
- Yet I’ll injure no man with my curse.
- Whate’er I’ve suffered, from lash or snake’s sting,
- I’ll have no man bear the blame or worse.
- The power that broke this spirit’s bright wing,
- Choking its breath as it flew on course,
- Sprang from this mad head, this mind of unrest,
- O, Maria della Salute, Blessed.
- Then my secret nymph stood there at my side.
- Oh, such a sight had my eyes ne’er seen!
- From the black darkness, a poem in her pride,
- Broke dawn’s glory in a dazzling sheen,
- Healed in an instant all my wounds beside,
- Yet left deeper wound, sharper pain.
- Now how could I bear this joy in my breast,
- Dear, Maria della Salute, so Blessed?
- She looked on my face, and none has yet seen
- Such a shine that sparkled from her eyes.
- On a frozen landscape the light of that mien
- Could warm mountain tops, melt snow and ice.
- Now my heart’s every wish was there to glean
- Sorrows and sweetness, gall and fresh spice,
- Hunger and thirst and the wants of my breast
- Eternity be yours for this bequest,
- O Maria della Salute, O Blessed!
- Was all of this splendor for such as me?
- This prize like a miracle mine?
- All these golden fruits, now ripe on the tree,
- Indeed all for me, in life’s decline?
- O rarest fruit, you, so sweet to see,
- Why were you not ripe at the harvest time?
- Forgive me, for I’m a sinner confessed,
- You, Maria della Salute, Blessed.
- Two forces struggled for mastery in me,
- Mind against heart, against flesh’s yoke,
- How long did they fight in this awful way,
- Like the tempest against the old oak?
- Finally passion grew weak in the fray,
- And the grooved brain made its last attack.
- You’re the hinge of the mind; you hold it fast,
- You, Maria della Salute, Blessed.
- My mind consticed, compressed my own heart;
- I fled its pleasures, mad in my flight.
- Oh, how I fled, so hurt at the start.
- Cold rose round my sun and quenchead its light.
- Stars darkened, and tears burst from heaven’s part;
- ‘Twas the world’s end, Judgment’s awful night,
- The crack of doom, the world’s trial at the last,
- O, Maria della Salute, Blessed.
- All broken hearted, my mind scored with fears,
- I hold her memory a holy shirine.
- Now in later years, whene’er she appears,
- It’s as thought God’s face were here, Divine.
- Within me the ice of agony thaws;
- Throuth her I see; all knowledge is mine.
- Why are our wise minds perplexed and distressed,
- O Maria della Salute, Blessed?
- In sleep she comes, all silent, refusing
- The loud rabble-cry of my desire.
- When she will speak, the time of her choosing.
- At her command she holds strange power,
- And all around her, in clouds suffusing,
- A heavenly pattern of charming hours.
- And my path to her is thus paved and pressed
- By Maria della salute, Blessed.
- We hold one another as man and wife,
- Without unhappiness, without care,
- Halcyon days, which no fever of life,
- Our passions cooled by heavenly air.
- She’s older now, and there is no strife;
- The past is as mute as unsaid prayers.
- For here my own age is blessed by the best,
- By Maria della Salute, Blessed.
- For us our children are poems I have made,
- Timeless traces of our elation,
- A written text, neither sung, nor e ’en said,
- Only the soul’s ray’s penetration.
- Only two known where the secret is laid,
- Rare is heavenly revelation.
- It’s what rapturous prophets have expressed,
- O Maria della Salute, Blessed.
- When the time of my doom comes round at last,
- When I break my head ‘gainst life’s jagged stone,
- My dream will be born with Death’s rattling brass;
- Then I’ll hear ringing cry, "Come home!"
- From nothingness into glorious grace,
- From limbo to the Heaven’s fult bloom,
- To heaven and into her arms so warm.
- Then that yearning will rise within my breast,
- And my heart-strings will quiver without rest,
- And the moving stars in the skies above,
- Both the men there and gods will gaze aghast,
- We’ll alter the path on which the stars move;
- We’ll melt in our warming sun all the frost,
- Till the dawn’s red glow lightens every cove,
- And all the ghosts are by love obsessed,
- Dear Maria della Salute, Blessed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Webkid (talk • contribs) 23:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)