Rocket - Edvard Kocbek

Moonlight is dangerous,

Mothers used to say,

Sleeping walkers on nocturnal roofs

Are very suspicious,

Fathers used to judge,

And yet children were dazzled 

By the fireworks of a mad crowd,

And this mathematical excursion of force to the Moon

Is the greatest fraud of all time,

An obsessed reiteration of a spinning World,

Caught up in death and darkness.

 

Time is more mysterious than space,

History books heavier than atlases,

Earth is the most colorful of rainbows

And man is hotter than the Sun,

And between the bright Cherubim 

The flame of spirit is the most irrepressible,

A burning rocket named Palach

Has measured history

From bottom to top,

Even black glasses have read

The smoky message.

---

Edvard Kocbek (1904 - 1981) Slovenia

Translator not stated

Source: All Poetry