Ludmila Jevsejeva: Autumn Melody (From Esperanto)

Autumn Melody
Ludmila Jevsejeva
Click here to hear me recite the poem in Esperanto

Quieting park. Black, muted avenue.
Shadow games spook along forgotten leaves.
Melodic autumn sighs into a flute.
The melancholic prelude comes and grieves.

A naked, trite and petrified faun snickers
Like Satan at a star felled from the sky,
Felled to uphold the law of centuries.
Nothing endures: beauty and life must die.

Quieting park. Just underneath tired feet
Yellow leaves whisper about death to be.
Nothing endures. A faun in slumberous calm
Smiles mutely and will word no sympathy.


The Original:

Aŭtuna Melodio

Silentas park'. Aleo nigra mutas.
En forgesita laŭb' fantomas ombra lud'.
Aŭtun' sopire melodion flutas,
Melankolia sonas la prelud'.

Banala nuda Faŭno ŝtonigita
Satane ridas al falanta stel'
Laŭ leĝo de jarcentoj mortigita.
Nenio daûras...nek la viv', nek bel'.

Silentas park', nur sub piedo laca
Folioj flavaj flustras pri la mort'.
Nenio daûras!...Faŭno dorme paca
Ridetas mute, sen kompata vort'.

2 comments:

  1. Never heard of this poet before. Younger generation, perhaps? Seems you have a penchant for lyrical poetry--polurita romantismo? I am some decades out of date, but my problem with older Esperanto poetry is that most everything is on the surface; there is a lack of symbolic depth. Not a deficiency of the language, but a limitation of the type of poetry poets were writing.

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  2. She's actually an oldie. And yeah, I take your meaning. But would you really say that, say, Kurzens is a surface-only kind of guy?

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