Yes, A Day Will Come (Oui, viendra un jour)

Mon ami anglais, l'éminent poète Norton Hodges, a traduit ce poème. Un ami cher à mon coeur!

Yes, A Day Will Come

to Penio Penev

'Then people will be good.'

Penio Penev

1.
The night is as soft
as the sigh of violets in the garden,
the sea-green sky,
striated with delicate flowing blue
rolls out its soft silks towards infinity!

I think of you, my poet friend,
as I look at your book,
your portrait, your eyes,
living and pure
with that intense inner light!

I love you! I speak to yout
hrough the thin veil of death
that separates us!

Cautiously I strip your soul
of its crystal thoughts
and transform them into roses!

2.

I read your lines full of poppies,
of wounds like Chinese peonies!

Your words are azure arrows
that strike my hands
and make my tongue bleed!

3.

The summer night steals your shadow
and makes you more transparent than air.

Yes, my poet friend,
there will come a day without death,
and then
life will rise again
from its very depths!

And we will finally be stars
in the land of flowers and love!

The book of the sky
will print on our faces
its double memory!

4.

Tender Osiris, adorned with ritual bands
rubbed with incense,
will guide our steps towards
the ceaseless, fulsome light
of the immortals!

Osiris, the god of lightness, who united in one flash of lightning
the infinity of the centuries
and the whole long corridor of time!

5.

O, my friend,
eternal is the existence of things
in the smile of the Word!

translated from the French of Athanase Vantchev de Thracy by Norton Hodges