4.26 Versa est in luctum

It was around nine in the evening when they finally allowed to leave. It had been one of the longest days of my life and it looked like the days were only going to get longer from here on.

Plodding like a zombie out of the building, I made my way towards Hakata Station.

“And try to get a good night’s rest,” Nakata had said.

How the hell did the bastard expect me to sleep at all after being told I might be arrested?

I plugged my head into my iPod, and, setting it on “shuffle”, pushed “play”. You never can tell what song will come up, and, just by chance–a one in over six-thousandth of chance because that’s how many songs I’d crammed into the device, Versa Est in Luctum, a somber choral piece by the Spanish renaissance composer Alonso Lobo, came on.

*

Versa est in luctum cithara mea,

My harp is tuned for lamentation,

et organum meum in vocem flentium.

and my flute to the voice of those who weep.

Parce mihi, Domine,

Spare me, O Lord,

nihil enim sunt dies mei.

for my days are as nothing.*

There was no more fitting requiem for the life I had been living up to then. I had no claims on the flesh I was giving up. I was as done with it and it was done with me.

*

*

*”Versa est in luctum [with verses originally from Job’s Office of the Dead] must have been written in 1598 for the funeral or memorial rites celebrated on the death of Philip II. In the 1602 print, this work is headed Ad Exsequias Philip II Cathol.Regis Hisp. It should be recognized as one of the masterworks of the late Renaissance.”

Turner, Burno, Treasures of the Spanish Renaissance, hyperion, 1985, p6.

*

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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~ by Aonghas Crowe on January 12, 2010.