Saligia – Sunk Into Memory
draft MT — needs author review
Beyond the town, a wide clearing. You know it well.
Overgrown with trees, it covers those who came before you.
There are the righteous, the prudent, the old and the young,
there are mothers too, soldiers, poets.
People wise and foolish, ordinary and great,
above them, carved in stone, the dates of life and death.
Doctors, criminals, all of them together,
healthy and sick, now in a coffin or an urn.
Now underground, without faces, lashes or eyelids,
eyes full of sorrow, yet stripped of tears,
they read back the books written by their lives in memory —
those deeds, those sins the confessor never absolved.
First is “Pride,” crushing the defiant and the weak,
raised above all else, blinding in the glow of fame.
They thought that being above others would bring them glory,
but pride adores only those who think themselves perfect.
Second is “Greed,” which hoards beyond measure,
though excess long ago choked its eyes and throat.
They must always have more than everyone else,
and if they don’t, they guard the secret so no one finds out.
Third is “Lust,” which deceives life itself,
in lies and in league, quietly luring, creeping in.
With desire it sets virtue and truth against reason,
and with lies it justifies, betrays, and finally kills.
“Envy,” the fourth sin, dangerous as a plague,
in sleep and waking it allows no peace.
It creates sick, poisoned, deeply aching illusions,
through which you suffer and wrong those who wish you well.
“Fifth,” intemperance, when sated with food and drink
you think only of how to finish what’s left before someone else does.
And you destroy your own body now, for a soul left hidden,
blind to those for whom hunger leaves no life at all.
“Wrath” raises the blood pressure, the sixth sin, of course,
though it is not always a sin, when your conscience is clear.
For instance, when you demand truth and honesty —
that is something else than an insult driven by the impulses of envy.
“Sloth” is the last sin — no less important, I’ll say only this much —
You’d wish someone else would do everything for you.
But if not for work, and the will to create something new,
if not for that — there would be no us, and no seventh day.
And of those I have recalled today, for a certain reason,
those who took with them their dreams, visions, doctrines,
and journeys to places they longed for in thought,
and also him, who left behind “Trams in the Desert.”
For Piotr F. – J.D.
For the painting “Saligia – Sunk Into Memory” — oil on canvas, diptych 81×167 cm.