Jaroslav Seifert (September 23, 1901 – January 10, 1986) was a Czech writer, poet and journalist. Seifert was awarded the 1984 Nobel Prize in Literature.
A PLACE OF PILGRIMAGE
Jaroslav Seifert
After a long journey we awoke
in the cathedral’s cloisters, where men slept
on the bare floor.
There were no buses in those days,
only trams and the train,
and on a pilgrimage one went on foot.
We were awakened by bells. They boomed
from square-set towers.
Under their clangour trembled not only the church
but the dew on the stalks
as though somewhere quite close above our heads
elephants were trampling on the clouds
in a morning dance.
A few yards from us the women were dressing.
Thus did I catch a glimpse
for only a second or two
of the nakedness of female bodies
as hands raised skirts above heads.
But at that moment someone clamped
his hand upon my mouth
so that I could not even let out my breath.
And I groped for the wall.
A moment later all were kneeling
before the golden reliquary
hailing each other with their songs.
I sang with them.
But I was hailing something different,
yes and a thousand times,
gripped by first knowledge.
The singing quickly bore my head away
out of the church.
In the Bible the Evangelist Luke
writes in his gospel,
Chapter One, Verse Twenty-six
the following:
And the winged messenger flew in by the window
into the virgin’s chamber
softly as the barn-owl flies by night,
and hovered in the air before the maiden
a foot above the ground,
imperceptibly beating his wings.
He spoke in Hebrew about David’s throne.
She dropped her eyes in surprise
and whispered: Amen
and her nut-brown hair
fell from her forehead onto her prie-dieu.
Now I know how at that fateful moment
women act
to whom an angel has announced nothing.
They first shriek with delight,
then they sob
and mercilessly dig their nails
into man’s flesh.
And as they close their womb
and tense their muscles
a heart in tumult hurls wild words
up to their lips.
I was beginning to get ready for life
and headed wherever
the world was most exciting.
I well recall the rattle of rosaries
at fairground stalls
like rain on a tin roof,
and the girls, as they strolled among the stalls,
nervously clutching their scarves,
liberally cast their sparkling eyes
in all directions,
and their lips launched on the empty air
the flavour of kisses to come.
Life is a hard and agonizing flight
of migratory birds
to regions where you are alone.
And whence there’s no return.
And all that you have left behind,
the pain, the sorrows, all your disappointments
seem easier to bear
than is this loneliness,
where there is no consolation
to bring a little comfort to
your tear-stained soul.
What use to me are those sweet sultanas!
Good thing that at the rifle booth I won
a bright-red paper rose!
I kept it a long time
and still it smelled of carbide.
====
DANCE OF THE GIRLS’ CHEMISES
Jaroslav Seifert
A dozen girls’ chemises
drying on a line,
floral lace at the breast
like rose windows in a Gothic cathedral.
Lord,
shield Thou me from all evil.
A dozen girls’ chemises,
that’s love,
innocent girls’ games on a sunlit lawn,
the thirteenth, a man’s shirt,
that’s marriage,
ending in adultery and a pistol shot.
The wind that’s streaming through the chemises,
that’s love,
our earth embraced by its sweet breezes:
a dozen airy bodies.
Those dozen girls made of light air
are dancing on the green lawn,
gently the wind is modeling their bodies,
breasts, hips, a dimple on the belly there —
open fast, oh my eyes.
Not wishing to disturb their dance
I softly slipped under the chemises’ knees,
and when any of them fell
I greedily inhaled it through my teeth
and bit its breast.
Love,
which we inhale and feed on,
disenchanted,
love that our dreams are keyed on,
love,
that dogs our rise and fall:
nothing
yet the sum of all.
In our all-electric age
nightclubs not christenings are the rage
and love is pumped into our tyres.
My sinful Magdalen, don’t cry:
Romantic love has spent its fires.
Faith, motorbikes, and hope.
=======
LOST PARADISE
Jaroslav Seifert
The Old Jewish Cemetery
is one great bouquet of grey stone
on which time has trodden.
I was drifting among the graves,
thinking of my mother.
She used to read the Bible.
The letters in two columns
welled up before her eyes
like blood from a wound.
The lamp guttered and smoked
and Mother put on her glasses.
At times she had to blow it out
and with her hairpin straighten
the glowing wick.
But when she closed her tired eyes
she dreamed of Paradise
before God had garrisoned it
with armed cherubim.
Often she fell asleep and the Book
slipped from her lap.
I was still young
when I discovered in the Old Testament
those fascinating verses about love
and eagerly searched for
the passages on incest.
Then I did not yet suspect
how much tenderness is hidden in the names
of Old Testament women.
Adah is Ornament and Orpah
is a Hind,
Naamah is the Sweetness
and Nikol is the Little Brook.
Abigail is the Fount of Delight.
But if I recall how helplessly I watched
as they dragged off the Jews,
even the crying children,
I still shudder with horror
and a chill runs down my spine.
Jemima is the Dove and Tamar
the Palm Tree.
Tirzah is Grace
and Zilpah a Dewdrop.
My God, how beautiful this is.
We were living in hell
yet no one dared to strike a weapon
from the murderers’ hands.
As if within our hearts we did not have
a spark of humanity!
The name Jecholiah means
The Lord is Mighty.
And yet their frowning God
gazed over the barbed wire
and did not move a finger —
Delilah is the Delicate, Rachel
the Ewe Lamb,
Deborah the Bee
and Esther the Bright Star.
I’d just returned from the cemetery
when the June evening, with its scents,
rested on the windows.
But from the silent distance now and then
came thunder of a future war.
There is no time without murder.
I almost forgot:
Rhoda is the Rose.
And this flower perhaps is the only thing
that’s left us on earth
from the Paradise that was.