Silk nights

Elegies for France

I

To go where there are unknown towns

Having naught but face and hands

Unstoried from each step

To the wings of a bird from the South.

A bird gathering grass

For a nest it won’t have time to finish.

II

We hear you on the vertical riverbanks

We hear you in our own heart

Like a breath upon a high plateau

Bringing solitude on the mountainsides

We know you in the face of the dust

We know you in the sleep of snowfalls

The railroad that transpierces night

In the morning’s expanse, an expanse of marble.

We know you in the walls of splendor

We know you in the dew of hunger

The wind of my land in the needles of filao-trees

A keen river deep within the voice.

Sitor Situmorang
tr. after Damais