# From the Grave I have come back from the grave, cast off the shroud like a worn overcoat, shaken the dust of centuries from my hair. The world has changed— or perhaps I have forgotten what it was. The streets hum with a language I almost recognize, faces pass like clouds, familiar and utterly strange. No one knows me here. That is the gift of the dead: absolute anonymity, a freedom that costs everything. I walk through markets where they sell the same old sorrows in new packages. I buy bread. I eat. The taste is a memory of taste. Sometimes I catch my reflection in a shop window and startle— there is still a face there, still the outline of a man. How generous the living are, to let the dead move among them without screaming. I have learned the names of new flowers. I have watched how children play and felt nothing, which seemed honest. The old loves are gone— not forgotten, but gone the way morning goes when the sun rises. Tonight I will find a room somewhere, lie down on a bed that is not a grave, and try to remember the weight of sleep, the small mercy of forgetting. Tomorrow I will wake (if waking is the word for what I do) and walk again among you, a ghost who has learned to cast no shadow, who has learned that the living need not see the dead to step upon them. This is what resurrection tastes like: neither bitter nor sweet, but the flavor of dust, settling.

What is it? ---Well, it's a lazy pendulum,
It walks over my head---
Through the glass, I can see where the waterfall is shining,
And my candle is burning.
Ah, the moment!
And my head is like a piece of ice.....
I'm sinking somewhere---


And that's death?
Oh, how carefully the angels of God
on their feathers bring me down to the tomb!
No pain, no desires, no limbs numb,
Damp touch of the earth.
I have never known such a gaze of
sweet eyes.


With me I see, oh, I see it plainly,
The breeze flippantly plays
With a human tear,
With words humane,
With deadly somber verses.


And now I lie here in bliss
and listen, humming
through the air.
Through the three-dozen sleeps
I hear them, sweeter,
Pleasant, merry voices, drunk......


......In the desolate oasis, the
Dry skull turns white,
And with a black letter on her forehead it says:
Pray, while alive!
Today I am silent and still,
Ah, it rests there on the dry head---
The most beautiful manuscript in the world!


And this morning I told the pastor,
Some essential understanding is missing,
as he claims that all the wisdom of bliss,
It is only on paper!
However, in the grave, where I am now lying,
There is no difference of thought between me
and God, this strange head is with me.


You would wonder, wonderfully above,
In what company I now lie!
But here, between us, the weather is otherwise,
And the views are very special!
…… Grandfather, my blood, upon earth
I held your head;
Now give me back your love for my love,
Now, so support the soul of mine!


A firmer crown is on the forehead,
Then I am a different man,
From the more solid chaos I am broken;
My space is no wider than
I am and I am completely filling it!


I used to be a blacksmith
above this dust of dust;
Like anything, I was wasting my time
Forging money and crowns.
As for the world, I had two key concepts,
Two wings on my feet: Fortune and Peace,
And I wrote on the crowns:
This is a bubble of foam of gold soap!


It must be fair to me, as
This inscription is not from me.
I found it in a superfluous book,
People call it history.
The book was written by two goddesses:
The first one---was called truth,
Then justice began to read and later edited,
I fell asleep on the first page!


From then on, they snored and in a terrible noise
The song of the universe got tainted;
And it is wonderful, wonderful from the heart,
That her voice did not reach up to that song.
Here is a blissful empire,
And death is its mute gatekeeper;
Here lie a dream and a white dove,
and that dove is on an eagle's feathers.


This is how I sleep, too.
No desires, no passions, no pain:
I hear no birds; I see no lights.
I am only sinking deeper into the darkness.
And there at the door of the great night
Let the white appear;
I am falling at lightning speed to her---
Oh, hello, dear God!