Sabers rattled through the dungeon.
The sound of orders. In a trance
shifted ghostly, lurid black shadows.
They shoved him into the deep, cracked corridors.
Long and dark, dark and long,
the latch screamed and the iron door burst open.
Then he felt the sky and the bitter air.
A prison wagon, a rolling tomb,
and he was hurriedly pushed in.
Beside him were shackled,
silent and pale
nine comrades;
not a word was uttered,
but everyone foresaw
where the prison wagon was taking them.
Under the rolling wheels,
their lives were caught between the spokes.
The car stops and the door creaks:
Through the open bars,
their drowsy eyes gaze with difficulty
into the gloom of the world.
A few cottages surrounded the square,
the low roofs hung with dirty frost,
and the enclosed square was covered with darkness and snow.
The fog, like a gray rag,
shrouded the penal colony.
Only the golden church around it
glowed with the cold, blood-colored light of early morning.
They stood in silent formation.
A second lieutenant read out the sentence:
Sentenced to death for the armed coup d'état.
The death penalty!
"The death penalty" rolls down like a boulder
and cuts through the silent ice.
The sound is hard,
and the ice sinks.
The hollow muffled sound fell into a silent grave,
and was dissipated in the cold morning.
He felt a vague sense of what was before him,
as in a dream.
All he knew was that he would die now!
A soldier steps out and
walks up to him and silently drapes him in the
white, shivering clothes of death row.
With burning eyes,
silent cries,
the companions say their final goodbyes.
The priest solemnly hands over the cross and reminds him to
kiss the Savior.
Then the ten of them, divided into three groups,
were bound with ropes to the stake.
A Cossack soldier
stepped forward quickly.
He wants to blindfold him facing the rifle.
He knows: this is the last time!
Before he sleeps forever
Gazing greedily at the sky overhead,
A little of the world:
He sees the church glowing in the morning sun:
As for the Last Supper
Burning its fa?ade red with the splendor of the sunset
He gazes at the church with sudden bliss
Like Gazing at that life of God behind death ......
Now they blinded him with darkness.
But in his heart
the blood began to run colorfully.
A flood of mirrors
From the blood emerged
a picture of life.
And he felt,
this second, this dying moment,
all the bygone past
rushing once more into his soul:
his whole being awakening again,
crossing his breast in a single landscape.
A pale, hopeless, bleak childhood,
father and mother, brother and woman,
three broken friendships, two cups of pleasure,
a dream of glamour, a few humiliations;
a picture of his vanished youth,
which rolled up in flames in every vein,
and in the depths of his heart he felt himself once more in full presence,
and in the depths of his heart he felt himself once more in full presence,
and in the depths of his mind he felt himself once more in full presence.
He felt his full presence once more in the depths of his soul,
right up to the very first second when they bound him
to the stake.
Then the shadow of sanity,
dark and heavy
enveloped his soul.
And this second
he felt, as if someone was coming towards him,
he heard dark and silent footsteps,
nearer, nearer,
as if the man pressed his hand to his chest.
His heart beat feebly ...... more feebly ...... and even ceased -
In another minute - -it would stop for eternity!
The Cossack soldiers
Formed a firing line in front of them ......
Raised their rifles, and loaded their bullets ......
The sharp sound of the drums exploded in the air.
The second was as long as a thousand years.
Suddenly, there was a roar:
Stop!
An officer
stepped forward, waving the throbbing white paper,
and his clear, ringing voice broke
the dead silence of the waiting:
The Czar
is merciful, and has reversed the sentence,
it is his holy will.
Send it instead.
It sounded
still strange: he could not understand the meaning of it,
but the blood
grew red again in his veins,
and they began to rush and to sing softly.
Death
hesitates to crawl out of the stiff joints.
The eye, though still blinded and dark
feels the eternal light
greeting it from all sides!
The magistrate
Noiselessly untied him,
and from his burning temporal bone
removed the white straps,
as from cracked birch bark.
Sleep-walking eyes open from the grave
and awkwardly touch the light, harsh and debilitating
to rejoin
the earth that has sworn him goodbye for eternity.
And now he saw
the golden dome of that same church,
blossoming mysteriously in the waning morning sun
.
The sunset resembled a blossoming rose,
and encircled its
glowing columns with devotional prayers;
and with clasped hands,
resembling sacred swords, pointing to the pleasant red clouds in the sky
.
And the temple of God
Rises in splendor in the dawn above the church.
The torrent of light
Waves its ardent waves
Right up to the musical heavens.
A foggy swamp
rises up in smoke, like
all the heavy loads of the earthly world,
into the divine morning light.
Out of the abyss rushed the ever-stronger sound,
and a thousand voices wailed into a chorus.
For the first time in his life he heard
The whole misery of mankind,
the groan of man's burning pain,
raging through the heavens.
He hears the voice of the weak.
The parasitic woman,
The self-deprecating whore,
The resentment of the bullied,
The lonely one, who has nothing to do with smiles.
He hears the children sobbing and crying,
The secretly beguiled fainting and fainting,
He hears the voices of all the afflicted.
The forsaken, the numbed, the mocked,
All the streets, all the streets, all the days and nights
Of nameless martyrs,
He heard their voices,
Rushing with a mighty melody
Into the open heavens.
He saw,
That only misery floated upward to God,
And the scribbling life
With happiness heavy as lead
Still stranded the others on the earth.
Amidst the waves of the song of earthly misery
Wailing in unison,
The light in the heavens grew brighter.
He knew that all this, all this,
God would listen down,
and that his heaven had uttered a loud cry of compassion!
God will not judge
the poor.
Endless mercy
Burns his heaven with eternal light.
The Four Horsemen of the Last Judgment run wild in all directions,
and for those who experience life in death
pain will become joy, and happiness will become torment.
Fervent angels have descended to earth with light
.
The divine, pain-born love
shines brightly and y into the trembling heart.
At this point he fell to his knees, and
he truly felt that the whole world
was filled with endless pain.
His body convulsed,
and he foamed at the mouth,
while tears of supreme bliss
wet his death-row clothes.
For he felt that just now
he had kissed the bitter mouth of Death,
his heart had tasted the sweetness of life,
and his soul had suffered torment and torture.
He knew
that he, at this second,
became the same
He who was crucified thousands of years ago. Like him,
since receiving the hot kiss of death
because of the crucifixion, and must love life.
The soldiers dismounted him from the stake
His face
Pale as ash.
They roughly
pushed him back onto death row.
His gaze was
different from that of the party, plunged into inward deep thought,
and a
bitter Karamazovian smile hung on his trembling lips.
A very good poem, the mental journey of a death row inmate before and after his execution by firing squad. The poem is beautifully written and the description of the state of mind is delicately portrayed and touching. The bolded font is my favorite part.
When a man is dying, he feels that there is nothing left in his life but his eyes to see a few glimpses of this earthly world.
See the beautiful sunrise, think about the last light of this life, think it is also an unexpected gift from heaven. And then if there is still time, most likely to think of their own experience of this life, family, friends, what happened ...... life of all the right and wrong feelings, in this last moment, I do not know what conclusion will be reached.