Petr Bezruč, translated by Paul Selver, An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry (1912)
“ A gloomy-faced miner was I, as I sprang from below in the mine. And though on their temples a diadem scattered its rays, Each of them flinched as he met my gaze, My clenched list, and my stubborn scorn, The wrath of the miner who up on the Beskyds was born. So scant is my blood, and now from my mouth It flows. When there grows Above me the grass, when my body decays, Who will relieve me on guard? ”
Petr Bezruč, translated by Paul Selver, An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry (1912)
“ To the one above they pay in the church their tribute, And unto the second with tribute and blood they pay. He, He Who is up on high gives bread that we die not, To the fish He gave streams, for the butterfly blossoms has shed ”
Petr Bezruč, translated by Paul Selver, An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry (1912)
“ And on my lips the coal is clustered around, And on my hair and my beard and my brows there lies The coal that like icicles hangs to the ground. Bread with coal is the fruit that my toiling bore, From labour to labour I go ”
