A Silent Foreboding (Kozeljnik)

I shall have written to you of the black, ere chants of pain with cries of woe are twined Foreboding ill in sullen bitterness, in Death's dour hand will I have written then How words may smite when thoughts all bite amain, the sore body made more akin to corpse With loathsome stench amidst unlatched decay a prayer austere will I have woven then What long has lacked the strength of voice now rears, in spelling out makes secret poison stir A deathly strain, in coarse rags through it slumber, bedecked with loam, grim fate metes out afresh So fierce a Beast the cry appears anon, with wings outspread frail hope is wont to batter It may so be the tomb is far too precious: invitingly, its charms their hold bid tighten... In silence stern will I have penned it then, a brooding prayer composed of sacred woe Ere soul is risen to the folds of black and on my doorstep death vouchsafes to tread I will have written to you of the black, surreptitiously, nay, maliciously...