MOONLIGHT

Translated by Michael Benedikt


Awaken, all you sleepy-heads
And pray now for the dead.
--Call of the Night-Crier


Oh, how delightful it is, as nightly hours ring out from the steeple, to see the moon--with its nose so like a golden coin!

*

Two lepers were wailing beneath my window, a dog howled at the crossroads, and the cricket on my hearth chirped out its tiny, ominous prophesies.

But soon, only utmost silence filled my listening ear. The lepers had retreated to their huts, to the customary sounds of Jacquemart beating up his wife again.

The dog had skulked off down an alleyway, past the halberds of the night-watch, all rusted by the rains and chilled by the keen, north winds.

And the cricket had fallen asleep at the moment when the last coal flickered out, there in the ashes of my fireplace.

And as for me, it seemed to me (for such are the confusions of fever!) that the moon had screwed up its face and was sticking out its tongue at me--like a hanged man!