In This Valley of Tears

This beautiful short story by Stanislaw Przybyszewski is very haunting and speaks of eternal love and soulmates and the eternal torment of trying to find each other. Night over the sea! The deep darkens from the black clouds; two stars struggle through the night with pale light and spray glittering frost onto the sea. Red-hot rings of haze grow around two stars; they grow, clump into clouds, the stars go out and curl deep into the sky like volcanic craters. A lurking silence hovers in the red haze of the sky; but already the craters are opening up and streams of fire shoot down into the water in a spraying rod vibration. For a moment the sea stands in towering flames, throwing its fiery arms fiercely up into the sky, the darkness flees in luminous swathes; but already the wonder dies away, the sky burns up, and on the darkness of the sea two pale stars twinkle like glittering frost. It happened that night. This is translated for the first time into English by Joe E Bandel and part of his Przybyszewski series of translations.