POEME ROMÂNESTI ÎN LIMBI STRĂINE
Ienăchită VĂCĂRESCU
In a Garden
In a small garden, at a tree’s side,
My sight was briskly beguiled,
I beheld a flower as bright as light.
Should I pick it? It will wither !
Should I spare it? I’m in a frightful dither
That someone else might be the breather.
The Mourning Turtledove
The mourning turtledove,
Lonesome and bereft of love,
Of his dear companion,
His grief fortells no more reunion.
From now on, in deep despair,
He’ll bewail and wish no pair,
In his flight over orchard and bower,
He’d neither look nor see the flower.
He glides over forests green,
He flies far and wide, his life’s lost sheen:
He takes wing till he would sinks,
Yet wouldn’t sit on green wood brink.
At times he chances to alight
On dry branches and twig blight:
Fretting through the deep oak forest,
He’d neither drink and eat nor rest.
Wherever he finds clear cold river,
He ruffles it and still goes further:
Wherever the river’s murkier and dark,
He ruffles it and sips the bitter cark.
Wherever he beholds the fierce fowler,
There he flies with all his heart’s desire,
To be within reach for the gun’s seal
That could anon cease his ordeal.
When a poor little turtledove
Tells his sorrow in wild lament,
Craving death, in woeful sobs of love,
the last murmur, reuniting and nocent,
Whilst myself, a lofty creature,
A tender heart and nobler nature,
Like a saddened mourner weep, alas !
Poor unfortunate me ! Will I find solace?
(English version by Gabriela PACHIA)
