The Open Sea

As I passed my childhood in Balkan towns, I felt
At every instant, a tongue of flame-like longing.
With the melancholy that devastated Byron in my heart
I wandered my youth through the hills in a mute dream,
I breathed the free air of Rakofça's fields,
Felt the hot desire of my raider ancestors:
For centuries a summer's racing northward
Lingered like an echo roaring in my gut...
Army in defeat, the entire country in despair,
Yet every night I dreamt a sense of victory.
The remnants of migrations, exilic emotions,
Waters streaming from across sorrowful borders,
Murmered together in my heart with that sense;
I knew it then, the taste of endlessness on the horizon!
I said one day, "I wish for neither lover nor locale!"
And so set out on a long exile, roamed from land to land;
Went to that final country, last frontier of earth,
And still on my tongue I taste the wide sea's salt!
In the uttermost west, most clamorous of final shores,
At a flood tide, the skies all draped in lead,
I saw that thousand-headed dragon they call the sea;
I saw it... the skin that turned its lovely body emerald
With a sharp shuddering, moment by moment it writhed;
I saw and knew it was that dragon coming to life.
Oh what a fervent coming... from the endless horizon!
How it gathered itself up of a sudden and roared!
Steam and sail, they all fled for the harbor,
The vast expanse and sea-scape belonged to it alone!
Alone it stood there, rebellious and enraged,
It gaped a thousand caverns, howling long and long,
I sensed its majestic grief as though I knew it well!
Face to face with your spirit I was, at that high-tide,
I listened to your plaint, oh eternally tormented sea!
I felt that in our souls we are one with you, in exile,
Realized that no lovely shore would give rest
To this agony, this unending thirst.