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What The Eyes Cannot See, the Heart Does
Not Regret
On the Eyes Getting Dim in Old Age
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My eyes are filled with mist, glasses are of
no use
I do not know why; probably old years' abuse.
Like an executioner beheading a felon
Death first. binds his eyes, first puts a cloth tightly ,
And yet why does he bind me, why my eyes cover,
Since he has seized all they had to love forever?
Behead me, nothing in this world is worth eyeing,
For this life has been full of pain, grief, and crying.
You have bound my eyes, nay, you rather plucked them free,
When you seized my children. Nothing dearer to see.
Indeed, looking at others, when mine I think of,
The eyes cause still more pain than when they were pulled off.
What will please the eye looking at spiritual
Not physical life? All is sin and dreamlike all,
A bubble on water. In the blink of an eye,
Nothing to lean upon, everything passes by.
You see water in the river, but it's different,
That which you saw went down; so quickly are spent
Worldly things. You haven't today what you had last day,
They get older, until with time each will decay.
Time like a river runs its waters to the sea.
The soil covers all these things that man's eyes can see.
Don't bind,
open my eyes to the world of dolor,
Let them look at the longed for end of this torture.
Fortune has already
tormented much my heart,
Why should I call death the tyrant of mortal part?
Don't drag from jail, from fire under sword, hook to square,
Behead me at once, don't slaughter with long despair!
Open them, do not
bind, let them see my sins' breadth;
They wouldn't cry for them in
health, let them weep in death.
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The World - a Prison
O, how miserable is this world's condition,
Like a jailed villain, awaiting execution.
He awaits, doomed to die, for settling of the score,
Morning or night - doesn't know when they'll knock on his door
So then whoever's fate was ever to be born,
Is already in jail, alas, a guard watching on.
He doesn't know day or hour from the cradle until
His hair will turn gray, when death orders him to kneel.
He's waiting day and night, at dawn, in the evening.
What then is man's life? Death for which we are waiting.
The incessant fear of death, which even much more
Than death itself makes human hearts be dying sore.
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Translated by Michal J. Mikos
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