"Death Sonnets" by Gabriela Mistral

 

I

From the cold niche where men placed you

I will lower you to the humble and sunny ground

That I too must sleep in it, men did not know

and that we will have to dream on the same pillow

I will lay you onto the sunny ground, with a

mother's sweet care for her sleeping child,

and the soil will become a soft cradle

receiving your infant's body aching,

Then I will scatter dirt and powder of roses,

and in a bluish and slight dusting of the moon

your light remains will turn into prisoners.

I'll leave, singing my beautiful revenges,

And no hand will dispute in this

hidden depth, your fistful of bones!

II

This long fatigue, will be greater one day

and the soul will tell the body it does not want to go on

dragging its mass by the rosy path,

Where men, content to live, walk on

You will feel beside you, digging briskly,

another sleeper comes to the quiescent town.

I'll wait until they covered me completly...

And we will talk for an eternity!

Only then you will know why your flesh

did not mature for those profound bones

you had to descend, without tiredness, to sleep.

There will be light in the dark place of fate,

you will know our alliance was written in the stars

and once broken the huge covenant, you had to die ...

III

Wrong hands took your life from the day

when, at a sign of the stars, you left the set of

snowy lilies, blooming in joy.

Evil hands entered tragically on it...

And I said to the Lord: - "For mortals paths they take him

beloved shadow, they cannot guide!

Tear him away, Lord, of those fatal hands

or sink him into the long sleep you can give!

I can not call him, I can not go with him!

His boat pushes a black wind of tempest.

Return him to my arms or you will reap him in bloom".

The rosy boat of his life stopped...

Did I not know what love is, had I no mercy?

You, who will judge me, you understand, oh Lord!