dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Maurice Aisen, trans.

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Conscript

Maurice Aisen, trans.

From “Roumanian Poems”

I.
DOWN there in the prairie

Met two brothers from the army.

Said one brother to the other:

“Take this saddle from my horse

And strike me on the head!

What shall we two do at home?

Mother, father, both are dead;

The cattle have grown old in the stable—

Where the house stood, all is grass.”

II.
Mountain, mountain, hard rock,

Let the youths pass by!

Let them go to be shepherds,

So they may run away from the army.

The army is a yoke of wood

Which the boys pull until they die.

The army is a yoke of brass

That they pull without ceasing.

III.
When a man goes to the army

The house becomes so poor

Children have not even a hearth.

If some day they grow up,

They will not know they had a father.

IV.
Why are you leaning, pine of the woods,

Without swaying and so sad?

Why shouldn’t I bend so sadly

When near me stand three woodsmen with their axes?

They’ve come to chop me down,

And put me in three wagons

And take me to their town,

Just to make of me a prison.

Four stern walls they’ll make of me

Where bravest men shall die.