لطفا منتظر باشید ...
TASIN OF CHRIST
Vision of the
sage Tolstoy
| In the midst of the mountain-range of Seven Deaths | |
| is a valley where no bird stirs, no branches, no leaf; | |
| the smoke encircling it turns the moon’s light to pitch, | 855 |
| the sun in its broad heavens seems dying of thirst. | |
| A river of quicksilver flows through that valley | |
| meandering like the stream of the Milky Way. | |
| Before it the hollows and heights of the road are nothing, | |
| so swift its current, wave on wave, twist on twist. | 860 |
| A man stood, drowned up to his waist, in that quicksilver | |
| uttering a thousand ineffectual laments, | |
| Rain, wind and water were not his portion— | |
| athirst he, and no water save the quicksilver. | |
| On the bank I espied a slim-bodied woman | 865 |
| whose eyes would have waylaid a hundred caravans, | |
| one that taught infidelity to the Church-elders, | |
| her glance turned ugly to beautiful, beautiful to ugly. | |
| I said to her, ‘Who are you? What is your name? | |
| What is this utter lamentation and weeping?’ | 870 |
| She said, ‘In my eye is the spell of the Samiri; | |
| my name is Ifrangin, my profession is wizardry.’ | |
| All of a sudden that silvery stream froze, | |
| the bones of that youth broke in his body. | |
| He cried -aloud, ‘Alas, alas for my destiny! | 875 |
| Alas for my ineffectual lamentation!’ | |
| Ifrangin said, ‘If you have eyes to see, | |
| look a little also at your own deeds. | |
| The Son of Mary, that Lamp of all creation | |
| whose light lit up the world dimensioned and undimensioned— | 880 |
| that Pilate, and that cross, that pallid face— | |
| what wrought you, what wrought he beneath the skies! | |
| You, to whose soul the joy of faith is forbidden, | |
| worshipper of idols fashioned of raw silver, | |
| you did not know the worth of the Holy Spirit, | 885 |
| you bought the body, gambled away the soul!’ | |
| The reproach of that fair woman, drunken with blandishment, | |
| was a lancet that pierced the youth’s heart. | |
| He said, ‘You who display wheat and sell barley, | |
| because of you Shaikh and Brahmin sell their own country. | 890 |
| Your infidelities have debased reason and religion, | |
| your profit-mongerings have cheapened love. | |
| Your love is torment, and secret torment at that; | |
| your hatred is death, and sudden death at that! | |
| You have associated with water and clay, | 895 |
| you have stolen away God’s servant from Him. | |
| Wisdom, which loosened the knots of things, | |
| to you has given only thoughts of devastation. | |
| That man whose substance is true knows well | |
| your crime is heavier than my crime. | 900 |
| His breath restored the departed soul to the body; | |
| you make the body a mausoleum for the soul. | |
| What we have done unto His humanity | |
| His community has done unto His divinity. | |
| Your death is life for the people of the world: | 905 |
| wait now, and see what your end shall be!’ |
