Danielionita1960 - translations added

Gone are the years, long clouds across the plain
And never will I witness them return,
They charmed me then, but I no longer yearn
For tales and doina*, riddles all in vain,

There are a few dead in town, my love
For this I came, I wished to let you know;
Upon the bier, from heat, inside the town
Cadavers fester silently and slow.

! when I was much younger and my body pure,
dreams of you, one night, my flower, I dreamt demure,
you were blooming without sin,
in an alder true and green

I didn’t think I’d ever learn to die.
Forever young and in my mantle cloaked,
My dreamy eyes I raise towards the star
Of loneliness.

The city square was filled up with the dead
They crowded out the street, walking asunder
Dressed in their finest clothes, as a reminder
That we, the quick, don ordinary thread.

Civilian things are few, there’s no reprieve
These rainy times with soldiers beating drums
We don’t have days, just military leave,
And babies jump saluting from their mums.

Oh minstrel sad, obscurer still
Than good old wine they serve at weddings
Which the groom’s father dished at will
With bags and ribbons, tinsel meldings,

I am the most handsome of all in this town,
The crammed streets are stunned as I walk without peer;
So sparkling and graceful the ring in my ear,
And so full of flowers my tie and my gown.

A Levantine prince quite enamored with hunting,
some dark-hearted forest was travelling through
and making his path with great effort and grunting,
he said, while on bone-flute he merrily blew:

Time is passing, time comes yet,
All is old, and all is new;
What for good or ill is set
You can ponder and construe;