Why Do You Whisper So Quietly? Poem by Peter Mamara

by M. Eminescu (1950-1889)

Why do you whisper so quietly
With sweet songs, spring you?
Speeding up your clear waves,
You pull out a flower from your banks.

And you carry it and take it along,
Slowly swishing on the stones.
Who knows where your waves
Hide this flower.

And so my life slips away
But there isn't a flower on its wave.
And unlike you, I don't tell my desire
— To anyone, anyone.

And I pass by, like death: in silence.
I don't look at the old mountains.
My fate is written into the wrinkles
— Of my sad forehead.

Only there, where the linden tree
Lowers its flowers to the ground,
I start to move my lips
And I send words into the wind.

Crazy dream and vain words,
The flower falls; the song is indifferent.
And I know only this:
— That I like to forgive.

(1876)

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