5. Seven Sons - 7. Vagabond

Seven Sons

An epic poem in 7 parts with Prologue and Epilogue

7. Vagabond

We will soon come up to the end of our tale.
Silvester was the name of the seventh son.
You understand that in life he also failed,
For every son we tell about did go wrong.

Sil never stood out from the rest of the brothers,
He was inconspicuous, had no grand wishes,
He never gave his kinsfolk a lot of bother,
He was not a nuisance, he was not officious.

No one ever knew what thoughts were in his head,
He never imparted what he felt inside.
All those who knew Sil thought he was a strange lad,
A boy not deprived of presumption, besides.

At school he did not show if he’d any talent
Or if he would ever be making good progress.
His being always undistinguished was salient.
No one knew what he aimed at: that was in darkness.

Sil saw that he was not liked by anyone,
Neither by professors nor by his classmates,
For he seemed to never know how to have fun
Nor how one must study not to get poor grades.

“He’s no aspirations,” said Silvester’s teachers.
“How will he survive, having no sense of purpose?
Of course, he’s no fool, and his mind is wide reaches,
But it is still foolish of him to be thoughtless.

He must know that life’s hard for boys of his kind:
It will not endure if one has got no aim.
He must ask himself: what is really my line?
What must a man do to win himself a name?”

Having graduated from high school, Silvester
Decided he would not continue his studies,
For he was sure he’d not bear one more semester
With people who didn’t see that the world is bloodied,

That no one cares for anyone but himself,
That everyone selfishly makes a career,
That all the true feelings are kept on the shelf,
That this cruel world puts a kind man in fear.

Sil, seeing that youth’s eaten up with ambition,
Did not want the general pathway to follow.
Long, long ago he’d made another decision:
To go round the world and, while watching some sorrow,

Help people see that there is not any need
To weep and to curse if life seems very hard.
“It’s true we all suffer, it’s true we all bleed,
But it does not matter if we’re kind at heart.

We may sometimes think that good is crushed by evil,
That there is no peace, all resorting to violence.
All we have to do is fight against the devil,
Not surrender to him, not suffer in silence.”

Silvester believed he was destined to soothe
A pain while assuring there was a way out:
“You are good inside, you’ve strayed, to tell the truth.
Look into your soul, you can change, there’s no doubt.”

So he set out on a hard and lasting journey,
A journey which only could have a beginning.
He left the paternal house one summer morning:
Burning with the wish to help, his soul was singing.

No one from his village saw him anymore,
And they did not care about our vagabond:
“He always was crazy, we always were sure.
With brains really cracked, nothing he ever learned.”

At that time Silvester met different persons
And tried to explain to them his strange conceptions.
Sometimes he was ignored, sometimes he got curses,
Sometimes he was given a friendly reception.

The cases of welcome were not numerous,
But Silvester never fell into despair,
For he still believed in people’s kindliness
(Though ‘most everyone about nothing would care).

Silvester, having only casual earnings,
Turned to a beggar who thought he was a prophet,
But he rarely met faith, compassion or yearning —
Just all-eating avarice and hunger for profit.

He could not return to the paternal home,
For that would be equal to confessing that
He had led a vain life, that he had been wrong,
And foolish, and stupid, and silly, and flat.

Egoistic people did not want to listen,
The sight of their cruelty was a real torture.
One day Sil just vanished, the poor man went missing,
The last of the sev’n who suffered a misfortune.

20–25.12.99