Benediction

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When, by an edict of the powers supreme,
The Poet in this bored world comes to be,
His daunted mother, eager to blaspheme,
Rages to God, who looks down piteously:

-'Rather than have this mockery to nurse
Why not a nest of snakes for me to bear!
And may that night of fleeting lust be cursed,
When I conceived my penance, unaware!

Since from all women you chose me to shame,
To be disgusting to my grieving spouse,
And since I can't just drop into the flames
Like an old love-note, this misshapen mouse,

1'1l turn your hate that overburdens me
Toward the damned agent of your spiteful doom,
And I will twist this miserable tree
So its infected buds will never bloom!'

She swallows thus her hatred's foaming spit
And, never grasping the divine design,
She makes herself within Gehenna's pit
The pyre suited to a mother's crimes.

Still, with an angel guarding secretly,
The misfit child grows drunk on sunny air;
In all he drinks or eats in ecstasy
He finds sweet nectar and ambrosia there.

Free as a bird, he plays with clouds and wind,
Sings of the Passion with enraptured joy;
Tending his pilgrimage, his Guardian
Must weep to see the gladness of the boy.

Those he would love watch him with jaundiced eye,
Or, growing bold with his tranquillity,
Look for a certain way to make him cry,
Testing on him their own ferocity.

In bread and wine intended for his mouth
They muddle filthy spit with dirt and ash;
Hypocrites, all that he touches they throw out,
And blame their feet for walking in his path.

His woman cries to all the countryside:
'Since he has found me worthy to adore
I'll let the heathen idols be my guide
And gild myself, as they have done before;

I'll sate myself with incense, myrrh, and nard,
With genuflections, meats and wines galore,
To prove I can in that admiring heart
Laughingly claim the homage due the Lord!

I'll set on him my frail, determined hand
When I am bored with this blasphemous farce;
My fingemails, like harpies' talons, can
Claw out a bloody pathway to his heart.

I'll dig the bright red heart out of his breast,
A pitiful and trembling baby bird;
To satisfy the dog I like the best
I'll toss it to him, with a scornful word!'

Toward Heaven, where he sees a throne of gold,
The Poet lifts his arms in piety,
And brilliant flashes from his lucid soul
Block from his sight the people's cruelty:

- 'Be praised, my God, who gives us suffering
As remedy for our impurities,
And as the best and purest nurturing
To fit the strong for holy ecstasies!

I know in Heaven there's a place for me
Kept for the poet in celestial zones,
And that I'll feast throughout eternity
With Virtues, Powers, Dominations, Thrones.

Man's sorrow is a nobleness, I trust,
Untouchable by either earth or he11;
I know to weave my mystic crown I must
Tax a11 the times, the universe as we11.

But treasure lost from old Palmyra's wealth,
The unknown metals, pearls out of the sea,
Can't equal, though you mounted them yourself,
This diadem of dazzling clarity,

Since it is perfect luminosity,
Drawn from the holy hearth of primal rays,
Of which men's eyes, for a11 their majesty,
Are only mournful mirrors, dark and crazed!'


Přeložil James McGowan