O Hagia Sophia — here did the Lord ordain / That nations and kings should stop in wonder!

Everything has been plundered, betrayed, sold / Black death’s wing has flashed past our eyes…

What sadness! The end of the tree-lined path /
Has vanished once again beneath a morning snow…

The night proceeds without delay, / And melts; and all the while, / Above a sleeping world, a pilot / Soars off into the clouds.

I came into this world to see the Sun / And the blue horizon.

Futile gift, accidental gift, / Life, why were you given to me?

There’s a melody in the waves of the sea, / A harmony in the clashing of the elements…

And their gaze is seized with horror. / One can understand their alarm. / The gardens are bursting their walls, / The very structure of the earth is shaken: / They are burying God.

But, friends, I do not wish to die; / I want to live, so I can think, and suffer…

A freedom-sower in a desert realm, / I set out early, before the morning star appeared…

Some of the incredibly haunting final poems of the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnóti.

When I die, I will see beneath the surface of the world. / The other side concealed behind the bird, the mountain, the sunset.

Nothing ever happens twice, / Nor will it. For this reason, / We were born without proficiency, / And will all die without routine.

You ask: Who thus ordains? / The omnipotent God of details, / The omnipotent God of love…

Throw open this dungeon of mine / Give me the brilliant light of day…

Ever since the Eternal Judge / Granted me the omniscience of a prophet, / In the eyes of men I read / Pages of enmity and vice.

It may be that everything has been profaned by centuries of crimes; / It may be that nothing has remained unstained…

The somber Demon, banished from the heights, / Soared aimlessly above the sinful earth…

When your weary consciousness / loses its balance; / when the steps of this staircase / slip from beneath your feet / like a ship’s deck; / when your nocturnal solitude / spits on humanity — you might / meditate on eternity…

Russia will awaken from its sleep, / And upon the ruins of autocracy / They will write our names!