Branko Miljkovic - Triptych for Eurydice

 I

On the haunted shore longer than the day, where the nightingales

are all dead, where red steel was before I came,

the sour taste of your absence I felt

on my lips. Death is still buzzing in my ears


The night on the other side of the moon often sinks

into unnecessary truths and amazed it bows.

Oh, under the skin a stream of my blood longs

the night on the other side of the moon, a night of cherries.


But all doors are closed. All echoes

are dead. They've never loved like that before.

Will I surprise the secret of death, being a victim.


A bitter tear in my heart. I'm on the plaguy wind.

This stone dream never ends.

To wake you I must, dead Eurydice.


II


On the bottom of the blind landscape where I am not, where

chilling sights are, from that side of blood where

poisonous fruit grows, I went down, there where soon night will

steal the constellation of tears which will ripen in my eye.


Oh, to inhabit the temples of my own eyes

Here I am defenseless in front of the scary loneliness. 

Not to turn around, no matter how much I want to,

An eyeless face will be on the empty wall.


Red birds sing in my flesh.

Black birds fly around my head.

May my forehead be bit into, in the ground


with leprosy and a stone under the summer grass

if I lose your beautiful face

on this bitter shore of darkness and fever.


III


The night, it's the stars. Out of my sleepy head flies a bird.

Between two sour depths, a single bird. And the garden

of good hope. Oh may I be dead. But curses don't work. My death

I carry in my head, I, a traveler without my baggage or a face.


I lost you, so far away, in the underground night

I, the wild hunter of stars, falsely faced with

untruth, an irreconcilable sleeper seen

by fate, I whose tears now run down someone else's face.


Where are you now, except for in my song, beautiful Eurydice?

You've grown to hate every shape of appearance, oh you picture

of my black city and the lost goal.


Everywhere in the world terrible love rules.

On the horizon, like the last hope,

clouds full of sky and future plants show up. 




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