is the one smallest grain flying back.
So take your ring, Policrates,
you have lived your life in vain.
Whoever throws out the most
will be loved by people the most.
In blackened sores and in his sins
he is like those smoky hearths
with the same old fire, the same old glint
of the heavens’ merry crackle.
And the waves beat, they know no end,
for a lofty wave is a chest
for the best and most beautiful ring
and a cellar for wine, the best.
When the deep swallows its visions,
we will say:
there’s nothing to lose!
And the deep will say that’s so.
And the dead are not embarrassed
by a strange and meager zeal—
they whisper in his ear
all that he forgot.
Having said goodbye to torment,
they crowd around the doors
with stories like those
they tell on Christmas Eve—
of gold and pearls and of the light
that comes out of nothing.
5. A BRAVE FISHERMAN
A peasant song
Can you hear, mama, a bird that is singing?
Wings beating in a cage, it doesn’t drink or feed.
A fisherman once said to me
when I was going home:
take a double chain with you
and take my golden ring,
for the night is short
and spring is short
and the river takes the boats.
I bowed to him low
and then I said to him:
the double chain I’ll take, my lord,
I will not take the ring,
for the night is short
and spring is short
and the river takes the boats.
Ah, mama, I keep dreaming:
some snow and smoke I see,
and a sinful soul is crying
before a blessed angel,
for the night is short
and spring is short
and the river takes the boats.
6. A WOUNDED TRISTAN DRIFTS IN A BOAT
Magnificence burns bright,
like a pearl dissolved
in a pitched and darkened bottle.
Yet in the depths of earthly hurts,
it starts to speak like a mighty wave,
like ancient Pontus unsurpassed.
O, my deathly longing, you want
to rise like a seawall from the fog,
to embrace yourself from far away
with the hands of the ocean.
Now with Bran’s silver wand
and the prophetic cry of the reed
confusing what we hear,
for ages you have been learning,
that like a sweetly aching wound,
life is vast at parting.
I like Tristan when from the tower
he jumps into the sea:
his deed is really like a star.
How else can we run from grief
but with courage purer then water?
I like the blood from a deep wound,
how it adorns every caress.
Que faire? I like an epilogue
where the ocean can be heard,
I love its every mask.
O, drift like wounded Tristan,
plucking at restless strings,
playing the music of free suffering
up to the heavens where a hurricane roams.
And within the vast ocean’s longing
the hero’s hushed yearning
is like a hamlet beneath a mountain,
like a household that’s early to bed,
outside a blizzard blowing.
And the blizzard gazes like a pale beast
through a thousand eyes of lashes
watching people sleep, while craftswomen
spin the common flax,
and of the ancient Fleece of Colchis
fate’s spindle whirs its tale.
“We shall not find it.”
“It matters not.”
7.
