The Poems of Mielo Erge
(Translated from the Kotraban)
-
How shall I go from these mountains
leaving the knife gray and the ice white,
the downy green and the warm brown--
how do I abandon my essence?
In the valley all is muddled
the colors flow one to another
blending, they are lost forever
and a soul vanishes among them.
How shall I abandon this clarity
where the air and earth and water
stand each aloof, a whole
drawn in in boldness, the seperate part?
Below they melt to a blur
shy darkening to dirt flowing to liquid
none standing apart and true
the elemental dissolving into consensus.
How shall I live without the heights
where things do not rise to sun and moon
but huddle in shame below--
myself among them.
-
Do you see that hill,
on the right there, far away?
I have gazed at it
since my earliest childhood--
now over it I will go.
Do you know the small track
which begins at the village edge?
I have stood at its head
all of my life--
now down it I will travel
Do you remember the brown cottage
just beyond the blacksmith's forge?
I have lived there
since my birth--
now from it I will go--forever.
Valdkaap
I stand before these city gates
Shrouded in bright dust,
Where hand-set ramparts (becoming sand)
Squat defiant for a moment.
Grim men scan the plain
From towers rising for an instant:
Here are but partitions--
I have seen bastions.
Along the narrow tracks,
Throught trees as old as dawn,
There are no bars to wanderers
Who are ever coming home.
Over the crisp white and the spike green
It is stars who keep the watch;
Where stone climbs to greater spires
Grander walls have grown.
Above the walks of my youth--
Enclosing ther withing
All that has touched my heart--
A true fortress stands.
Who made the songs on the North Wind?
When I pause they reach me,
Flowing from some high place
To the shore where I walk.
Who spun the web on the wind?
The filaments weave around my soul
I reach in vain, grasping,
As the vision floats before me.
Who wrought the music from the moutains?
I feel the words blow through me,
The notes wrap arround me,
And something brushes against my heart.
