[Mobius]

FreeSpace can be celebrated in many ways. We've got campaigns, mods, fan fiction, and artwork of all kinds. One such kind of artwork is poetry.

It's been WIP for a few months but I finally managed to publish it. "Riflessioni dall'Infinito", which can be translated into English as both "Reflections from Infinity" and "Thoughts from Infinity", was presented to the public a few weeks ago, when I got the chance to give copies of the book for free to those who donated a small amount of money to AIRC, the Italian Cancer Research Association.

This work features 20 poems, one of which is titled "Le ultime parole di un tiranno" ("A tyrant's last words"). A man refering to himself as "the Admiral" talks about how he drove a rebellion, leading an entire and young generation to death by exploiting fears long seeded in a corrupt society. At the very end, said Admiral considers himself one of History's many victims, as his victors will write stories about him, not his allies, thus describing him as a cruel tyrant. You know who the poem is refering to, right? It's Aken Bosch during his monologues.

Due to its particular nature (poems have a specific style), it's pretty hard to get it translated. I may try and do something about it, though.

Book's cover:



Tribute to FreeSpace's Admiral Aken Bosch:

Le ultime parole di un tiranno

Vivo la fine della mia esistenza da nascosto,
fuggitivo fiaccato da immensa esasperazione,
un Re senza una corona, sepolta dalla sabbia.
Immagino i miei nemici vittoriosi, esultanti:
cosa diran ai posteri di me, l’Ammiraglio?

Questa è la tragedia di una vita, la mia.
Essere ricordato come mattatore di popoli,
distruttore delle vite e d’intere famiglie,
colui che mise fratelli l’uno contro l’altro,
prodi araldi improvvisati d’ideali fasulli.

Come una forza naturale, come un dio,
credo d’aver mosso fiumi e montagne:
al marciar delle armate, quieto silenzio,
come se tutto il creato fosse spettatore
della rivoluzione nata dal mio orgoglio.

Dell’ignoranza altrui ho fatto forza,
un’arma ancestrale che mai ha fallito.
La mia sapiente e fine arte della parola
riapre antiche ferite d’un popolo diviso,
e da esse sgorgano fiumi di caldo sangue.

Ad un’intera generazion perduta, figli miei,
ho ridato vigorosa speranza persa da lustri,
ragion di lotta cresciuta da un credo confuso,
grigio e mutevole come una nube al cielo
che imprevedibile ombra sulla Terra lascia.

Sto andandomene, eclissato dalla sconfitta,
e toccandomi il viso, prima della dipartita,
lo sento diventar simbolo d’odio per secoli.
Muoio invero da crudele mietitore d’anime,
ma anch’io stesso vittima di plagiata Historia.

[Nightmare]

Saw this a while ago, it looks pretty interesting, maybe you could add a translated version of that? I'm afraid most people on HLP can't read Italian (me neither) and putting poetry into Google translate is a sin.

[Su-tehp]

Hell, I'm half Italian (my mother and her family moved to Argentina a few years after WWII, where she met and married my father and I was born there just before we moved to the US) and I can't read this. Then again, I'm the black sheep of my family because I'm only bilingual (English and Spanish) while the rest of my family is at least trilingual (English, Spanish and Italian). There are vicious and unsubstantiated rumors that Spanish and Italian are the same language, rumors I have yet been unable to confirm.

I second Nightmare: an english translation of this poem, while perhaps a violation of poetic form, would still be nice.