Song of Autumn I

 Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness;

Farewell, vivid brightness of our short-lived summers!

Already I hear the dismal sound of firewood

Falling with a clatter on the courtyard pavements.

All winter will possess my being: wrath,

Hate, horror, shivering, hard, forced labor,

And, like the sun in his polar Hades,

My heart will be no more than a frozen red block.

All atremble I listen to each falling log;

The building of a scaffold has no duller sound.

My spirit resembles the tower which crumbles

Under the tireless blows of the battering ram.

It seems to me, lulled by these monotonous shocks,

That somewhere they're nailing a coffin, in great haste.

For whom? — Yesterday was summer; here is autumn

That mysterious noise sounds like a departure.