... When will the red anemones sprout on our sweet mountain?

... The ribs of the mountain have dried up in this frost!

... And the hollows of the rocks long for warmth...

... When, I wonder, will the red anemones sprout?

And when will the virgin bouquets of cyclamen rise upon the face of the earth?

And when will the flush of spring come back to our mountain!!

... And when shall we come back, with the spring, to rub our noses in the fragrances, breathing the fragrances in the crossings of the paths, and barefoot in the fields?

... A heavy winter it is, this one that broods over our hearts and our houses; the stabs of the cold have gnawed into our ribs, and our skins have stiffened in the frost... and the eye is dim; no lights shine into it from the high mountains.

... When will the red anemones sprout?

And when will our earth sing again in green and in red, in jasmine, and color upon color?

... And this nightingale, on the sill of my window — I knew him yesterday...

He fled our village in the mountain to seek warmth and health here...

There is no song in his throat...

His throat has stiffened in this deadly cold...

Rise, sweet red anemones, rise before the nightingale dies on the sill of my window...

... Yesterday death was a heavy guest in our land; it came down among us with iron and lead, striking down and striking down, and no hand was turned against it, and no vein trembled before it..!

*

Death was harsh and bitter: it had no pity on a homeland, and no pity on a wife and children — as if death had blood-scores to settle among us...

*

It was a week of sorrows... Some of us cried out, and their grievous cry tore them apart; and some kept silent — neither crying out nor complaining, but moaning on in their pain...

*

It was a week of sorrows and bitternesses, in which death hovered on its two black wings over the houses and the dwellings, the balconies and the lights — over the small houses and the high palaces...

Into every dwelling death entered, carrying terror and dread with it...

*

It was a week of sorrows... in which death folded away whom it folded away, in a storm that wrapped up history with a swift, thunderous wrapping... and left blood in the square, and a history of blood...

*

The gate of blood is the widest of the gates of immortality...

And whoever dies in the storm, history writes him down a storm.