...
That land seemed strangely known to me…
And terror, terror wrapped my soul!...
Again I heard the measured toll
Ripping the silence o’er the land:
At once I knew it did portend
The evil omen; this heavy knell
Kept ringing, ringing in my cell
Till I was almost half-insane;
It seemed to pour out from my brain
As if they hit me on my head
With something ponderous as lead.
O God, I thought, why did you choose
To give me what I never use:
The vigour and the potent mind,
Desires, passions, youth and pride?
Why did you fill my soul from birth
With lust for freedom? Why on earth
you made my life to no avail,
And turned my native land to jail?
You did not want to rescue me,
You did not show the way to flee
From murky darkness where I grope,
And now I’m like a wolf in rope.
Thus I lamented. My outcry
Was desperate and stupefied
Of utter sufferings I bore.
Say, shall I be released once more?
I was betrayed from the beginning,
Up to this moment I was living
In meager hopes about the flight,
I prayed and waited, and I cried.
And suddenly, before my eyes,
I saw my childhood days arise
In gloomy row, I did recall
Your church’s dark forbidding hall,
Along the cracked walls the taints
Of images of your saints,
They slowly watched my furtive nook
With threatening and silent look,
While behind bars, beneath the tile,
The shining sun was playing wild,
O how I craved to be out there,
Away from prayers and their stare
Into the wondrous world of fight…
I swallowed bitter tears, I cried,
My voice was trembling when I sung
the eulogy to Holy One
Who made my life to no avail,
and turned my native land to jail…
O! I was sure I knew this toll,
I heard it since my childhood stalled,
It prompted: I should never tread
The pathways of my motherland!
My spirit was forlorn, depressed -
I felt the coldness in my breast,
They say a stabbing dagger will
Produce the similar blood-chill.
Then I despised me. All worn out,
I was too weary for the shout,
I recognized my littleness
And choked my passions in the nest
As serpent chokes his little fowl…
Say, with a weak and feeble soul,
Do I deserve my destiny?
1839/2011
VP