An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/The Burial

For works with similar titles, see Burial.
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The Burial

ANEŽKA SKLÁDALOVAAt the age of sixty-nine-she was ailing for many a day—On Monday, September 15th, passed away.
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    And to-day is Wednesday.   Six candles are burning, and the organ’s gloomy sound  Escorts our grief along the path of the cross aroundThe church, behind which are field and high-road, and trees are growing there,  From the coffin to them we can ransom ourselves   Only with the plainest prayer:    Thy will be done.
    Along the straggling pathway   The dark-clad mourners tread,  Here greatest pity is for the living who are weeping for the dead,  Here the heavens are sundered in our gaze, and have bedecked the dead with their pall,  O hearse, O gilded mound, you are too small, too small,    O coffin, you are too empty, For she who is dead steps forth from your domain,On the ribbons of the funeral wreaths she comes to life again,  Fluttering on the white ribbons with the living names    The whole world she can span:Jiří, Karel, Jaroslav, Věra, Dagmar, Zora, Radovan:    Her grandchildren.
    Around the poplars beyond the town     To the burial-place we pass on our way.    The corn in the garners already is placed,     And we garner it again to-day. ​   Naught in this world is turned to waste,    Nor ever shall be so.  The garnered corn to bread doth grow.
   When the funeral comes to the graveyard gates ,    The eldest grandson meditates:
 Three hundred anguished days your heart, O grandam, bled,   When drop by drop the blood from your body was shed;Grant that I die not as you in a forlorn bedchamber, for I  As a soldier with bayonet and rifle would die,    Wounded to the heart by a bursting shell.     The struggle’s unrest     Is my quest    To gain the glory of this world.
 Sweeten not, O priest, your sermon with talk of paradise, angels and the blessed soul,  Heaven is a morsel of this earth with its everyday folk;Sing not, O choir, over the grave a canticle lack-lustre with dole;    Sing rather as gardeners   At the seed-time sing.If I weep, I weep not for the dead. None there be.If I suffer, it is grief for the living that suffers in me.    Only the coffin we bury,    Only the name we bury   Of hearts which lived righteously.
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      O graveyard, O graveyard,       O garden green,     On you the most precious seeds       Have ever been        Sown for life’s sake,The Grievous Hour (1922)

 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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Translation:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 54 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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