European Elegies/Winter/Unhappiness
31.UNHAPPINESS
Night makes my grief more tense and tragical. . .Disquiet haunts the darkness like a ghost,And writes with shadowy fingers on the wall,A menacing reminder of things lost.
The flooding tears that from my sorrow startWash down the silted miseries of the past;Black clouds envelop and suffuse my heart,And freeze my dreams, and leave my hopes aghast.
Yet, oh that some great Hand's transfiguring ritesWould set soft roses where rough thorns now are,And with the touch of peace transform my night'sEgyptian anguish with a paschal star!
From the Spanish of Juan Ramón Jiménez.