Selections from A Year of Mourning by Lee Harlin Bahan, translator 279: Madonna If birds sing mournfully, or wind in summer coaxes faint applause from emerald leaves, or raucous, coruscating riffles murmur beside this flowering, lush bank that gives me somewhere cool to sit, consider love, and write, I realize I see and hear her, buried yet radiant and alive above, providing all my sighs a distant answer. “Why pine away before your time?” she says, sorry about the state she’s found me in, “Pain needn’t stream from your unhappy eyes “for my sake. Day became unending when I died. The instant my eyes seemed to close, they opened to the light that shines within.” —Francesco Petrar...
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.