You are earth and death.
Your season is darkness
and silence. No living
thing is more remote
than you from the dawn.
When you appear to wake
you are only sorrow,
it is in your eyes and in your blood
but you do not feel it. You live
like a stone lives,
like the hard earth.
And you are dressed in dreams
in shuddering movements
that you ignore. Sorrow
like the waters of a lake
quivers and surrounds you.
There are rings on the water.
You let them disappear.
You are earth and death.
[3 December 1945]
Translated by Isabel Wall