Translation:The Black Heralds (1918)/Prayer of the Road
I don’t even know for whom is this sorrow!
Oh, Sun, you who are dying, take it
and hang, like a blood-soaked Christ,
my bohemian pain over her breast.
The valley is of bitter gold;
and the journey is sad, is long.
You hear? A guitar is growling. Hush!
It’s your race, the little old woman
who upon knowing you’re the guest and that they hate you
nails down her face with a white welt.
The valley is of bitter gold,
and the ordeal is long..., long...
The road turns blue, the river barks...
It lowers itself, this forehead, sweaty and cold,
ferocious and deformed. The broken pommel
of a humanicidal sword falls!
And the scraggy holy valley of gold,
the ember of sweat extinguishes in a cry!
There remains an odor of time cultivated with verses,
for shoots of consecrated marble that would inherit
the golden song
of the lark that rots in my heart!