Clouds lower: they are clefs, 
they wade loose in the blue, 
and my shoes wade in the stream 
of the summer wind anew.

The shrines of St. John 
enwreathed in withered mugwort, 
a cloud of butterflies 
has reached them - I don't know how.

Beyond that, along the road to the meadow, 
on these clay hills,- 
go, railway track, go. 
Ivy-like ticker tape - has grown across the rails.

A path bends toward the meadow 
down over the pass. 
A boy foams nakedly, treading 
the river grass.

There where the pines end 
in front of the town, 
a hundred supple branches of hands 
by his brain of twelve years are thrown.

Among the corn-flower drops 
on the fish-scales of water, 
the brisk whim flaps 
and the spiral torso.

A cry. Oh, stream! Oh, sun! 
mouth, hands stacked high with the cry. 
In this ecstasy at noon 
the twelve-year-old brain burns like a motor.

I look; daylight strolls across noon, lopsided I trudge, 
evening piles up a hill on my way. 
The wind has moved the grass, but the factory chimneys won't budge. 
The gold on the river will become gray.

Boy! Boy! tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, 
this joy in nakedness which is not life's leaven 
will be locked up, and the key will be sorrow. 
By 1936, a helmet will cover your head instead of a heaven.

Through the Borderlands

The horse lifts its head again and again. 
Very monotonously topples the mane: 
wheels, the wheels 
through fields.

A dreamy half life rattles 
along a wood-, a meadow-path, 
steep down, down deep 
afield.

At dusk, the dark red moon 
stumbles over the stubble fields. 
Gold leaf! 
I weep.

No, there is nothing. No sleep. But the screeching of wheels. 
The night and its mist are too big for reality. 
I weep; gold leaf. 
I weep wheels steep deep afield gold leaf.

Idyllic Dream

Will the gurgle of rain sound like the snort of a nightmare 
as it falls from the low black sky 
on the yellow and white, the tinkle of magical flowers? 
Ah no. We have the words to conjure with: 
sulphur: female horses have woollen manes.

The Virgin Mary walked among the stars, 
cooling the souls that smoulder. 
Erect in thunder, fearful at midnight, I stood. 
O why do you live in that dark corner of dreams? Why keep the company of those who sleep? 
You ravens, you wolves, you bulky bears, swift stags, 
fly. You are free. Do not make us afraid. 
Amen.

Purified now by the darkness 
your silver comb flashed over the porch. 
Speech poured from the quiet ditch 
where the voice of sweet sedge 
announced the confession of water, 
its hands as clean as Mary's stars.

But the orchard is outside, behind the window, (What right have we to speak?) 
and the useful dill and carrot blossom beyond the beehives.

Purify us too, whoever, wherever, you are: 
release us from our own works and from the habits of animals. 
We lie like logs on the straw, 
but this is why we are kneeling, 
and will kneel, still as the dead.

Grief

My hair is greying but it slants with light 
when strands of wind lift it, a chandelier, 
that I must always carry through these hollow streets. 
The swallows twitter by the river and 
it's not so heavy - just my head. 
Walk. Walk on.

Walk. Walk. And watch: the scenes, the dreams, the feasts: cracked 
glass adorns the synagogues with scars ; 
a flame gulps up the coarse thick hawser; 
the flame of love 
denudes us.

The nations are most greedy when they roar. 
They cannot whimper like a hungry man.

This evening heavily upon the world 
spreads its low length as nostrils scent 
red milk from bared volcanoes. 
Deciphering which stranger: Who are you ? 
and multiplying magically through 
our own torn selves, I shoot my names, and die. 
I die, who huddled with my plough in furrows; 
I, a brisk lawyer, drown in instructions; 
I, in chlorine, I choking, I dying, gas 
and I am the girl who sleeps with the primrose; 
and I, a child, in a live torch, live; 
and I at my market stall with the blaze of a bomb; 
and I am the madman who's hanged for the fire: 
I am my signature, my mother's illiterate cross.

But now the harvest 
shows with deep noise.

And how can the river untorture itself and unrust 
our brotherly blood before, among us, 
the colonnades rise, the mathematical eagles? 
A blizzard of swallows will come 
with a whirl that swirls my head, 
but through the darkness that the birds give wing 
I shall walk, I shall walk on.

Translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer