Dr. Rinaldo Diricchardi-Muzga Poet Lyric

Hymn of Homeland in the Night

(A gentle–prophetic, classical liturgical poem)

I. The Land Beloved

O Slovenia, cradle of my first breath,
You, Emerald Valley, cradled by mountains,
You chalice where the rivers of childhood
whispered their psalms among the pines—
How my heart still kneels before your beauty.
For in your winds I once heard angels,
And in your stones the footsteps of our saints.
Your fields were rosaries of golden grain,
your villages' small tabernacles
where every evening bell
wove heaven into the dusk.

II. The Turning of the Heart

But now the twilight grows heavy.
The silence of unbelief
spreads like fog over vineyards and rooftops.
The altars remain,
Yet the hands that blessed them
grow weary,
and the children who might fill them
wander along other paths.
O homeland, beloved and bewildered,
You walk swiftly into the arms of strangers,
forgetting the One
who stayed with you through all your storms.
You turn to new idols—
comfort, power, the soft lie of self-sufficiency—
and call them freedom.
III. Cry of the Child

And I, your child,
stand like a lone sentinel
at the edge of your sleeping forests.
Not with anger—
for love has no room for such fire—
But with a sorrow that prays.
I do not accuse you, Slovenia;
I weep for you.
I gather your wounds into my hands
as one gathers fallen leaves
to warm them by the hearth.
For what else can a child do
When his mother grows cold?

IV. Benediction for a Homeland

So I bless you, Slovenia—
even in your wandering.
May the One who walked our battlefields
and cried our forgotten tears
call you gently back to Himself.
And when dawn comes—
not the dawn of politics,
nor the dawn of earthly power,
but the dawn of mercy—
may you rise renewed,
like the forests after rain,
like the mountains after snowfall,
like a mother who remembers
the child she once held close.
Amen.

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