The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert by Jaroslav Seifert

Author:Jaroslav Seifert [Seifert, Jaroslav]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Catbird Press
Published: 2016-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

A Prospect of Prague

Once upon a time — the old storytellers

used to begin thus —

I was returning home along the river.

The river was calm and quiet

and in the silence I could hear the murmur

of flowing time

in the bottom of the hourglass.

The older you get the better you hear

that sound of time.

Buildings are mirrored in the water,

roofs downward,

and their outlines are trembling.

Their windows have been glazed only with water

and only a mermaid could inhabit

their flickering shadows.

I knew a mermaid

years ago, as a young boy.

Into the gentle lap of a young woman,

more beautiful than the princess of a castle,

she once laid an apple.

No painter could have painted one so beautiful.

Under its sweet peel

there were all kinds of magic:

the magic of love, the magic of pleasure and passion,

the magic of longing

and the magic of the moment when one person gives

himself to the person he loves.

A talking bird in a golden cage

turned to her startled face

and screamed at her:

— That’ll teach you!

Faced with this precious gift, the girl

burst into tears.

She thought love knew no boundaries

and lasted

as the sun or the stars in the sky,

but of the men she encountered

none had enough courage

to repay her in like coin.

One in no time gave her only pain,

another grief

and nights of tears,

another just cold nothingness.

But always for a big armful of love.

As soon as it heard her bitter lament

the talking bird in its golden cage

screamed into the dark:

— That’ll teach you!

She heard him but it was too late.

At the time when in the Prague she loved

she was only just alive,

she was sick and all her beauty gone,

the painter Morstadt was still busy drawing

his prospects

full of light and comfort and peace.

Look, two gentlemen are here escorting

a lady dressed in pink.

What glistens high above their heads,

Prague’s ancient Castle and St Vitus’ Cathedral,

is the crown

on the royal brow of the city.

At first glance one might get the impression

that life was happier in those days.

It’s a delusion.

Neither was life happy in those days

nor were the towers quite as high

as the painter made them.

The engravings merely try to force upon us

a beautiful lie.

It is over a hundred years

since they brought Paní Němcová back

from Litomyšl.

She was sick and death was fast approaching,

death indeed already sat on her tongue.

Someone’s hand tried to reverse

the clock of her life.

But the sands were finally running out,

her time was up.

With tears in her beautiful eyes

Karolína Světlá put on

a black brocade dress with lace.

How it suited her!

Neruda was quite bowled over,

could not take his eyes off her.

As the cortège moved off from The Three Lindens

in Příkopy Street

the talking bird in its golden cage

turned to the dead woman

and, even as the black hearse moved off,

screamed after her, one last time:

— That’ll teach you!

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.