When did you strike the keys, that over the keyboards’ snow
Quivered beneath your fingers like the waves on a moonlit plain?
And then you played of my life, of the evening’s tender glow,
Romance, of dreams, denials and disdain.
In your music my hour’s slumbering choir came to life
And melted through the stillness, as an angelus of silver bells
Even my blood’s refrain poured in my veins through the rhythmic strife
Of joyous youth, as if accented by my laughter’s riotous spells.
The pain of burnt desires smouldered beneath your song
In solemn requiem’s cadences fell as tears
And a longing for the Highest fell to the ripened ground
As dew drops fall in sparkling golden streaks.
Time inhaled, a feeble scent, stirred by your music’s might
In grapes of foreign wines it settled beneath your tone’s impact,
While the glory of bygone suns, and the splendor of a starry night
Were mirrored in your rhythm’s pitch black cataract.
Then with your strings’ vibrations you touched the mystic strain
’Til through excessive quivers it flared into a bluish light
Of a flaming haze . . But your music reached in vain
With the Unknown’s voice of might.
My listening mortal ear . . . Where the stillness vaulted and wept
My soul’s soft, deadened sighs, and grief in speechless forms!
Like a scent of offerings, to the angels’ windows crept,
The sorrows of future days . . . the ozones of coming storms . . .
THE ANNIVERSARY
The familiar road I travelled on changed before my very eyes.
Even the trees that grew before me out of the lifeless snow
Seemed not the same! In the filtering greenish light smouldered the sunset.
Like an extinct pyre of a dead, wasted day, now strangely saddened.
The horizon narrowed self with a drawn circle of steel. The night ripened.
I saw black brotherhoods of forests kneeling to the ground,
As if to pray for the dead . . . The pall of the heavens was lowered
Above my head, as if pressed and weighted down by the dusk.
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