|
EPITAPH
FOR MARIANA
his Brother Paul’s Little Daughter
Born
in a column beset
by pyres and the sword’s edge,
Half-stifled
by the smoke,
my mother’s painful pledge,
My
father’s highest concern,
through to the light I pried
As
the enraged inferno
swallowed our countryside:
I
looked out on the world
and bade goodbye straightway,
For
all the world’s horrors
I met that single day;
If
only days you count
I died when I was young,
but
old if you assess
the terrors I lived among.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
top
of page |
