Back to the Anthology

Cantata for the Lonely

I shall carry your image, dear portrait,
As a fairy-tale knight his amulet;
Through the world in my heart.
How often it cures all my wounds.
In your charming features
I see the beauty of my enslaved land.

With a bright smile shining on her face.
Like the broad spaces of our unmown fields,
Her curly braids remind me of the wheat
And under them so softly gleam her eyes
With the color of our Polesye springs,
Her eyebrows are as straight as willow rods.

When you turn up your eyes a little,
Your lashes are like reeds beside the water
Dozing in the heat of the sun.
Your lips are like strawberries ripe
And your breasts are the mysteries of depths
Under your hand-woven linen.

My immortal land still lives
In your chaste beauty
And I find a secret joy in this.
I pray for your youth,
I wish happiness to Belarus,
I sing this cantata to my own land.

My country, where for ages
The war has raged like a beast,
Is beaten down:  The human tears,
The human blood has risen like a flood.
There is no peace, no freedom to work
On our ancestors' land.

It's not in vain that we expected
Imprisonment and destitution,
Fear and despair grew ever stronger,
From angry censorship we hid
Our wrathful, roaring waves of words
Of which our country only heard the echo.

Where bushes grew and savage moss,
Our Belarusans always sang untroubled
Their national hymn in a loud voice.
But later on the forest grew too dense,
Alien people even catch the song
To drive it into prison.

The spies are keeping watch like owls,
O, singer of our sorrow, now be silent!
For words of love and sadness
Many people perished among those deported
To the starvation steppes of Kazakhstan,
To the cold and northern Taiga.

But why?  For what?  Why did this happen?
There is no kindred spirit now at hand,
It's like a graveyard full of walking corpses,
Thus I became a solitary man
Among my lonely countrymen
During this crucial time.

I walled myself in my own monastery,
I secretly remained there with my silent lyrics,
But still I know that in the future
My mute, sad poetry will sing again
In my now silent lines.

The time is not yet ripe
When we can write and live in truth,
And mournfully my thoughts turn to my people
Who suffer so and die in vain.
It's bitter to know that in my country
The ravens circle over you, my girl.

I know that you, my dearest girl,
You suffer from a double grief.
The strangers take away your dowry
Gratis, and violate your honor.
Your table is not covered with the cloth
Which you yourself have woven.

On it you wove a pattern
With love and lovely to the sight.
On the edges you have scattered cornflowers
And in the corners there are horses
And soldiers in the grandeur of "Pahonia"
Among the flying banners.

You should preserve this table-cloth,
For us it will be a reminder
That our ancestors were
The masters of all Belarus,
While we... we have an empty pocket,
And full of grief, we wear our rags.

When the strangers took away our bread,
When they looked everywhere, trying to find
One single grain to confiscate,
Was it so easy to keep calm
Seeing these robbers' picture,
Was it so easy not to burn with this sharp pain?

Was it so easy to endure when my brother
Who looked in torment from behind the bars,
Asked us for what was he imprisoned?
When in our home the strangers rummaged
Through all our people's treasures
And once again they crucified our Christ.

When all the individual farms
Were searched through
And every family was thoroughly investigated,
Was it so easy to endure this?  And to keep silent
Cloaking my rebellious soul with darkness?

When these strangers felled our forests,
A mortal pity broke my heart,
This pity bit me like a viper,
How can I now avenge the torture of my Mother
Whom these hangmen murder in the prisons
And cut her body to a hundred pieces?

Should I continue keeping silence?
Or break the mournful seal
That locks my breast?
Look around now, how terrible this is!
She is so cold and dark, so bare and dead.
The sticky fear reminds me of tar...

I was unable to articulate one single word,
I heard the ringing of the fetters on my feet,
The sound of iron on my hands.
They were invisible but hung on me,
They were inaudible but still they rang
As the sad echo of my tortures.

Am I really deprived of the right
To show my filial love?
We know that even Eskimos
Look at their Tundra, at their desert land,
With a gaze of love
Because they were born and grew up there.

We have grown up among our fields,
Our lakes, our rivers and dour ponds,
Where in the dark blue evenings
The sweet perfume of savory and thyme
Floats above the water-meadows,

Where the hay-mowing smells of rue,
Where precious treasures lie
In the sown fields and hallows,
Where colors are so radiant in the filed
And shapely birches, poplars
Frame each side of the highways.

There the proud stork stands on its nest,
Keeps calling as though talking to its young ones.
The perky starling sings, and in the shrubs
Of raspberries and currants,
In the green thickets of the cherry trees,
Your hear the ringing warble of our nightingale.

Near the old rows of lindens
You hear the sad tones of the pipe
And the whistling sound of the shepherd's whip.
All this is sweet and beautiful
Like my dear girl's garden
And the black little chamber on her roof
Behind her willow hedge.

You also come from there, my spring dream,
You always looked out of your window
And cherished all my thoughts...
Nowhere is there a country like my Belarus.
I love her so, I give my heart
And all my blood to her.

1955

 
Back to the Anthology