Oh, Clear Up Cold Darkness You Poem by Peter Mamara

By M. Eminescu (1850-1899)

Oh, cold mist of time, you. Clear up.
Open out your dark shell, which is like melt-ebony.
Make it, so it can shine on the way that leads to eternity.
All that unseen reality is real at the time it arrives on the scene.
Even though it goes across without being seen,
Like the time, which is in everything that exists in this world.
So I can see those thoughts sneaking out in proper gear,
That when they come out, they look as if might last forever.
Only that latter you wouldn't know, how they vanished
From the long and onerous perception of the centuries,
Like they never existed.
How many beings have to walk along your way?
Some are full of pride, overconfident and royal,
—With crowned heads, and dressed in purple.
Others are sweet, white like lilies, with soft and big blue eyes.
They move their voluptuous alluring bodies.
And they glance through, like any mortal does.
They search for love, in the same way sirens do.
Some are snobbish. And some are truthful.
Some are unyielding. And some are inviting.
They all ask for licence to live forever.
And all of them slip out with all these,
On the way that leads to the city of nothingness,
That is buried inside eternity.
But on top of these diverse crowds of passing thoughts,
One can see how they raise to the sky their arrogant heads
— Like mountains of eternal thoughts.
They look with indifference at the entire ephemerae
Passing down the valley, singing, yelling, and arguing.
And one thing that forever cannot be theirs
And every one of them wishes for: it is eternity.
(1872)

Translated by