|
The Moon |
My desert from your native land how many a league divides!
Yet by your power the waters of my heart feels these rough tides. |
To what far gathering are you bound, what far gathering come?
Your face is blanched, as if from journeyings long and wearisome. |
You in this universe all light, and I all darkness, share
One destiny together in our valley of despair; |
I burn in a flame of longing, ah! burn for the gift of sight,
And you, all seared with fires of longing, bed the sun for light; |
And if your footsteps cannot stray from one fixed circle’s bound,
I too move in one circle as a compass-hand moves round. |
You roam forlorn life’s path to whose dull griefs I too am doomed,
You shining through creation’s throng, I in my flame consumed; |
A long road lies before me and a long road waits for you;
The silence of your thronging skies is here in my heart too. |
My nature is like yours, you who were born to seek, to rove,
Though yours are silver rays—the light that guides my feet is love. |
I too dwell among many: if you go companionless
Amid the company of heaven, I know your loneliness; |
And when for you the blaze of dawn proclaims extinction, I
Drown with you in the crystal glory of eternity. |
And yet, yet, radiant moon! we are not of one race; it is
No heart like your heart that can feel and tell its miseries. |
Though you are of light, and I of darkness made, you are
Still far from thirst of consciousness, a thousand journeys far; |
Before my soul the path lies clear in view that it must trace—
No gleam of knowledge such as mine will ever light your face. |
Translated by: V.G. Kiernan |
Home