here you go, better late than never 
France Preseren
The still beating heart
A grave is being spaded for one who has just died;
A face appears - a young man is lying there inside.
The diggers stop in horror, they hardly can draw breath;
Those less afraid stare close at the pale face of death.
The forhead anyone would full handsome, fair have found,
Had not some cloud deep thereupon left its shade profound;
The mouth would have been handsome, as also would the face,
Had not some discontent on them left a bitter trace.
They look down at the body; their breath turns it to dust.
Alone the heart remains there, to every eye`s mistrust.
It`s beating still, they hear it, as fierce and without rest
As if it were yet beating within a living breast.
They ask, who was the last to be buried in this grave -
A saint for sure, they think, since he did the rot outbrave.
A yet unnoticed gravestone is standing at its head;
They clean the moss off quickly; these words can then be read :
Of Dobroslav the singer here lie the last remains,
Who sang in sweetest measures about love`s bitter pains.
He sang in famous verses of one for whom he yearned,
A proud and lovely maiden who his attention spurned.
When for another youth she undying love confessed,
No single song thereafter was born within his breast.
Complaints he did not utter, to neither God nor peers,
No laughter lit his features, his eyes were void of tears.
He lived not as a saint, but his duties he denied;
Without the holy oil and the final rites he died.
They say he must have mouldered, no holy man was he;
They say another`s heart there for certain it must be.
"It is a poet`s heart," an old man they hear attest,
"For if it were a saint`s, his blood would let him rest.
Not saintliness the mouldering delayed - eternal song
It was that he had stored in his breast those years so long.
His heart now let us open and leave beneath the sky
Until today is over and one full night`s gone by,
Until tomorrow`s sunrise, until daylight, and then
When the cold dawn is over, we`ll lool at it again.
Let gentle breezes cool it, let it be damped by dew,
Let sun and moon and starlight what they his long life throuogh
Inspired in him, those dreams, now take back all that they gave.
If in that time it`s mouldered, then back into the grave."
They opened up the heart and it lay there night and day,
Beneath the crystal heaven, till dawn had passed away.
At sunrise see the heart now, of heartbeat quite bereft,
Fast melt like snow in spring time; to bury nothing`s left.
translated by Tom M.S. Priestly and Henry R. Cooper, Jr.
Last edited by dulcelocura; 02-08-2011 at 04:24 PM.
sin tu luna, sin tu sol, sin tu dulce locura...