MOIROLOGEMA (English)

Le poète américain Vito Quattrocchi a traduit en anglais le poème que je lui ai dédié. Qu'il en soit remercié!


MOIROLOGEMA
(Song of Destiny)

For Vito Quattrocchi

Who knows still that I was a stragegist,
Prince, emperor, who?

Now I lie without breath on the flagstones of the church
Surrounded by some poor hired mourners.

Oh Greek women,
Girded by turquoise belts,
Who knows still
That a silk thread of azure,
Separates the Good and the Evil, who?

Cry to me, Greek women,
Woman of my noble race,
You, forgiving peasants
With faces eroded by the tears!
You who carry in your untied hair
The maternal scents
Of native mountains!

You who can speak with wild grasses
And with flowers without names, with songbirds
And with bewitching serpents,
You who surround all of your love
Simple and pure as the morning!

That your sobs led me by the hand
To a land immemorial as time,
Eternal as the desire of gods!

You who are unaware of the subtle schisms,
Of Constantinople,
The sacred city of the Virgin,
Its plays complex with intrigue,

You who know nothing of fine tragedy
Of your emperor Romanos Diogenes,
Blinded and abandoned by his own,

You who never understood anything
Of the brutality with which
The basileus of Byzantium Nicephoros Botaniates
Was dethroned by Alexios Comnenos!...

Regard all as finished,
As if all is simple and well-ordered!

I will rest here,
In my land, my land, yes,
Forgotten by all,
Covered by insane weeds and brambles,
My name faded and carried by the winds
As a blade of grass.

Athanase Vantchev de Thracy

Paris, this Sunday, September 7th, Year of Our Lord 2008

Translated into english by Vito Quattrocchi