A SONG AT THE END

Listen: about little Hendele.
She came back to me yesterday
and she was twenty-four already.
And as graceful as Shulamite.

She wore an ash-gray squirrel fur
and a pert little cap
and round her neck she’d tied a scarf
the colour of pale smoke.

Hendele, how well this suits you!
I thought that you were dead
and meanwhile you have grown more beautiful.
I am glad you’ve come!

How wrong you are, dear friend!
I’ve been dead twenty years,
and very well you know it.
I’ve only come to meet you.

---

 

ST GEORGE’S BASILICA

If in the white Basilica of St George
fire broke out,
                     God forbid,
its walls after flames would be rose-coloured.
Perhaps even its twin towers: Adam and Eve.
Eve is the slimmer one, as is usual with women,
though this is only an insignificant glory
                   of their sex.
The fiery heat would make the limestone blush.

Just as young girls do
after their first kiss.

 

JAROSLAV SEIFERT
tr. from the Czech by
EWALD OSERS