will fetch me when it wants
to look at me with a matchless gaze.
What are you doing, spiteful offense,
Sitting before me, like a fortune-teller?
Will you say that I live badly, that
I offend the sickly and the sufferers?
2. THE STEED
A traveler rides along a dark road,
he rides without hurrying, rides on and on.
“Ask me, my steed, whatever you like,
ask me anything—I will answer it all.
People will not listen to my words,
and God knows all without my tales.
How very strange it all is:
Why does fire burn in this world,
why do we fear midnight,
does anyone feel happiness?
I will say—but you will not believe—
how much I love the nighttime road,
how much I love this banishment
and tomorrow they will banish me again.
So come nearer, time of mercy, of healing,
drink down the hangovers of my youth,
draw forth the stinger of young years
from the fresh hot wound—
and then I shall be the wisest of all!”
The steed does not speak, but an answer is heard,
the long road draws onward.
And no one on this earth is happy.
And the unhappy? They are remarkably few.
3. FORETOLD FATE
Who can possibly know what fate will hold?
He who divines the future fails to see fate.
Perhaps even you may someday remember me,
while I shall forget you completely.
I shall appear then silently,
as the unliving come quietly to the living,
and I shall say that I know something
that you will never learn.
And then I will kiss your hand,
as servants kiss their masters.
4. CHILDHOOD
I remember early childhood,
and a dream in a bed of gold.
A dream? Or perhaps truth:
someone sees me, someone
comes in quickly from the garden
and stands there, smiling.
“The world,” he says, “is a desert.
The human heart—a stone.
People love what they do not know.
Don’t forget me, Olga,
and I will forget no one.”
5. SIN
You can deceive the high heavens—
for high heaven cannot possibly see everything.
You can deceive deepest earth—
for deep earth sleeps, and hears nothing.
Clairvoyants, fortune-tellers, and seers are fair game—
but you will never deceive your own self.
Alas, mirrors, glass panes, and forest streams
love not the sinner among us:
strangers’ blood courses there like the wind,
and twists like a serpent in pain.
“Tomorrow we shall awaken early
and go to see the fortune-teller,
we shall give her money for her work
so she may tell us—
she sees nothing. Nothing.”
6.
There is a mean and spiteful man,
an unkind man, a sufferer.
Oddly, I feel sorry for him,
but I am even more unkind.
And once when we were talking,
too long ago to remember when,
it was nighttime, with endless rain,
as if it had fallen deep into thought,
as if someone had stepped down
to walk all in tears, as if made of tears:
not about self, not about sky,
not about winding stairs,
not about all that is past,
not about all that will be—
nothing will be.
Nothing can be.
7. CONSOLATION
Do not try to guess about your own death
and do not smile, when all is lost,
do not think of how they will mourn you,
how their regret, too late, will sting them.
This is a poor consolation, and
an amusement that offends the earth.
Better
