Cast flowers, more flowers - Lesia Ukrainka

“Cast flowers, more flowers, and still more flowers
And the white gauze on the face
Of what is called illusion…” My God!
So often these words sound in my ears
In the dead of night, “Flowers, more flowers,
I loved the beauty so much!...”
My poor friend,
I brought you all the flowers which
The sparing spring of your sparing land
Could produce and which I collected and put into the coffin,
I buried that pathetic spring in all its misery.
You are sleeping in the ground among the dead flowers,
And I’m horrified to think about them,
And about your slumber;
I’d better cover
Your sleep again with the gauze
of illusions
In order not to stir the frightening mysteries of death;
I’ve heard enough of its preludes,
They chilled my blood,
They turned me into stone;
I still cannot utter what
The songs of death have taught me.
Sleep, my dear friend, sleep, may nothing disturb you,
I will not say the secret words
to anyone again.
You asked for flowers? I’ll give you more flowers
Than that hostile spring managed
to produce,
That cruel spring which took you away.
I’ll give you flowers in full bloom, I’ll water them with my blood,
And the drops on them will glitter like rubies —
O they will be so different from those pallid, anemic flowers
That inclement spring produced — and they will not wilt,
They will not return to earth,
they will not die,
And you will come back to life
in a wreath
Of living flowers, the gauze of illusions,
The gauze of those dreams of mine will envelop you,
But will not hide you — you will shine
Like a sunray in a light haze
That spreads over the golden field.
Let the years pass, one after another,
Let my life flow away with the stream,
You’ll live in the beauty of flowers,
And I shall live in the tears of songs.

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Lesia Ukrainka (1871 - 1913) Ukraine
Real name: Larysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka