A Stone
It was a night, a cool summer night. Replete with blueness and moon-shine and love; she fell passionately upon the earth, like a passionate wealthy mother upon her friendless orphan, emraced her softly with velvety skies, kissed her with grass scents, caressed her with breezes, wept for joy with meteors, and somewhere a cricket sawed its serenade, and somewhere a frog croaked continually the " prayer before sleep, " and somewhere in the grass I lay forsaken — somewhere in the grass... The body clung to the ground; and the soul strayed and sought for a goal in heaven's deep. And between body and soul, high, way up in the ether of skies, wistful, silvery fragments of clouds swam through slowly... A cloud — a thought, a cloud — a fantasy... A cloud — a shattered white dream. And between body and soul softly twinkled worlds of stars .
Somewhere in the grass I lay in lonesomeness and sought for a heart to share the yearning in the night .
It was too good, that I should be able to keep still, too fresh the grass that I alone should smell it, too deep the sky that my thought should float there alone without drowning. A tremendous summery bliss was suspended in the air — it craved to be grasped, it craved to enter the heart — a bliss too great, too sweet for one soul to absorb. Yet there was no one with whom to share it. All have merely stolen tiny fragments of the night, of the enthralling summer-bliss, have hidden themselves with wives and children, with brides and bridegrooms, closed doors and shutters lest some one see them, and gnaw there in stillness — lest some one hear them, each in his nook — at his crumb of pleasure .
I sought a heart and found a stone. Lonesome as I it lay in the grass, yielding nothing to life, grey and soiled and hard, it expected nothing from life. I moved it closer toward me and longingly pressed it to my feverish forehead, as if it were a mute brother, covered it almost with my black locks, felt with my veins its strong heart, touched with my nerves its granite pulse, absorbed through a thousand pores in my skin its silence and its hardness. And without utterance I felt how many waters and streams had rolled and flung it, how many rains had washed it and how many storms had buried it and dug it up again; how many winters it had known and how many summer nights it had lain alone, alone, alone ...
My stone is silent, silent — and I too shall be silent. From behind closed shutters strips of light peep mockingly; hot shadows of women float in bolted houses... My stone is silent, silent, and I also shall be silent...
Somewhere in the grass I lay in lonesomeness and sought for a heart to share the yearning in the night .
It was too good, that I should be able to keep still, too fresh the grass that I alone should smell it, too deep the sky that my thought should float there alone without drowning. A tremendous summery bliss was suspended in the air — it craved to be grasped, it craved to enter the heart — a bliss too great, too sweet for one soul to absorb. Yet there was no one with whom to share it. All have merely stolen tiny fragments of the night, of the enthralling summer-bliss, have hidden themselves with wives and children, with brides and bridegrooms, closed doors and shutters lest some one see them, and gnaw there in stillness — lest some one hear them, each in his nook — at his crumb of pleasure .
I sought a heart and found a stone. Lonesome as I it lay in the grass, yielding nothing to life, grey and soiled and hard, it expected nothing from life. I moved it closer toward me and longingly pressed it to my feverish forehead, as if it were a mute brother, covered it almost with my black locks, felt with my veins its strong heart, touched with my nerves its granite pulse, absorbed through a thousand pores in my skin its silence and its hardness. And without utterance I felt how many waters and streams had rolled and flung it, how many rains had washed it and how many storms had buried it and dug it up again; how many winters it had known and how many summer nights it had lain alone, alone, alone ...
My stone is silent, silent — and I too shall be silent. From behind closed shutters strips of light peep mockingly; hot shadows of women float in bolted houses... My stone is silent, silent, and I also shall be silent...
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