Water Lilies

GeoPooch Sobachka - Oct 14, 2008 4:39 pm - Hasn't voted

Thanks Marc. Of course water lilies are usually the stuff of sleepy stillwater lowlands ... but they are beauiful in the mountains too, sometimes. I wanted to quote a WWII verse from Ilya Ehrenburg about the suicidal mountain torrent of times, which will, only much later, quiet down into the sleepy stagnant ponds, but couldn't find any English translation. That's the poet of the Green Eyes of Spring fame

How can the folk in tropics dwelling,

Where roses in December grow,

Where people hardly know the spelling

Of words like ``blizzard'' and "ice floe'',

Where ever azure, ever pleasant,

Above them sails a silken sky,

Since time primordial to the present,

The selfsame summer soothes the eye.

How can they even for a twinkling,

In slumber, or in daydream learn,

How can they have the slightest inkling

Of what it means for spring to yearn,

Or how in freezing winter vainly,

When dour despondency holds sway,

To wait and wait until ungainly

And massive ice gets under way.

But we have known such wintry madness,

Have learned such coldness to abide,

No longer have we room for sadness

But only misery and pride.

With cold resentment in out being,

When blizzards blinded everything,

We pictured, without really seeing,

The halcyon days of verdant spring.

Marcsoltan - Oct 14, 2008 5:12 pm - Voted 10/10

Thank you Geo Pooch Sobachka for finding this lovely poem.
I have a confession to make. The last time I went through a whole poem was probably thirty years ago, but I red this one twice.
Marc