Crimean Sonnets by Adam Mickiewicz
Crimean Sonnets by Adam Mickiewicz
VII: Bakhichisarai at Night
The faithful villagers have scattered from the Mosque;
The echo of a muezzin's voice melts in the calm of dusk;
And the horizon blushes deep, tinged with rubies.
The king of silver, crescent of the night,
Rises to his white throne to rest with his love.
The torches burn perpetually in the Harem of Allah.
In their midst, one cloud sails on the azure plain,
Like a swan asleep on the mirror of a lake
With ghost-like breast and wings edged with gold.
A shadow falls from minaret and cypress.
Further out, granite giants frown as they hold council
Like Daemons gathered at the Court of Eblis:
Shadows are their pavilion. Lightning strikes, at times,
Down from their brow, and with the speed of Faris,
Rends all the silences of sapphire space.
[transl. Elizabeth Zoffer}
V: Mountains Seen from the Kozlov Steppes
The Pilgrim
Those heights! Did Allah thrust so sheer a sea of ice?
Or throne of frosted mist for angesl cast?
Sprites of a quartered continent make walls
To claim for East the caravan of stars?
What echoes! Is Stamboul on fire? Or, when
Night spread its dark chylat, did Allah,
For worlds that nature's ocean navigate,
Hang central there in sky this great divide
The Mirza
Those Heights? I've been in winter's nest there; seen
The throated streams, beaked torrents, slake their thirst.
I breathed and snow flew from my lips; I moved
Where clouds stopped dead, where eagles lost their way.
I passed by thunder cradled in its shrouds
Till one star lit my turban: Chatyr-dagh!
[transl. George Reavey]
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