Prevod
In the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, stood a hedge of roses; here, in the first rose, a bird was born, its flight like light, its colours lovely, its song glorious.
But when Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were driven from the Garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel’s flaming sword fell into the bird’s nest and set it alight. The bird died in the flames, but from the red egg flew a new one, the only one, the ever-solitary Phoenix. Legend tells that it nests in Arabia, and every hundred years burns itself to ashes in its nest, and that a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, flies out of the red egg.
The bird flutters about us, swift as light, lovely in colour, glorious in song. When a mother sits beside her child’s cradle, it is there by the pillow, beating its wings into a halo about the child’s head. It flies through the humblest room, and sunshine fills it; the poor chest of drawers breathes the scent of violets.
But the Phoenix is not only Arabia’s bird: it flutters in the glow of the northern lights over Lapland’s icy plains; it hops among the yellow flowers of Greenland’s brief summer. Beneath Falun’s copper cliffs, in England’s coal mines, it flies like a dusted moth over the hymnbook in the devout worker’s hands. It sails on a lotus leaf down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the Hindu maiden’s eyes shine at the sight of it.
The Phoenix! Do you not know him? The bird of Paradise, the sacred swan of song. On the cart of Thespis he sat like a chattering raven, beating his black wings smeared with wine lees; over Iceland’s poet’s harp glided the swan’s red, ringing beak; on Shakespeare’s shoulder he sat like Odin’s raven and whispered in his ear: Immortality; he flew through Wartburg’s hall of knights at the contest of minstrels.
The Phoenix! Do you not know him? He sang you the Marseillaise, and you kissed the feather that fell from his wing; he came in the splendour of Paradise, and perhaps you turned away to the sparrow that sat with imitation gold upon its wings.
Bird of Paradise! Renewed every century, born in flames, dead in flames, your image hangs framed in gold in the halls of the rich, while you yourself so often fly lost and alone—a mere legend: the Phoenix in Arabia.
—In the Garden of Paradise, when you were born beneath the Tree of Knowledge, in the first rose, Our Lord kissed you and gave you your true name—Poetry.
