Seen Through Idle Eyes

 
Sleeping trains roar through the mist,
around them a few great fields wander, unemployed.
At the door of an ancient heathen temple
the scent of incense.
At the foot of a hill a vast army
of half-naked people shivers and quarrels.
That quarrel has a simple name: causeless quarrel.


The highway weeps along with them,
over there in the garden the fountain trembles,
beneath it meditating couples have been lost in love for a hundred and fifty years.
In the lake dead leaves are spinning.
Stubborn, grey-haired old
men shake the air with laughter,
and only the elderly, those who have grown very old,
have begun to search afresh for the meaning of weariness.
We seek blessings from them,
they seek rest from us.


Let prayers be offered for the ants, smaller than the people
of this spinning earth, let life spread among them.
The river must hold plenty of fish,
let the city not encroach upon the forest, let the forest grow wilder still,
and if nothing else remains in everyone's life, let there at least be peace.
Blessed are those women who still look upon their children with loving eyes,
who laugh in harmony with their husbands.
May happiness come to their homes, may they have beautiful children.
Blessed are those golden boys who preserve
my decaying bones in lonely fields.


Poets surely flee from the spring they have made,
or are banished from it.
Their lips are dry, bearing no trace of kisses,
what they utter can only be heard by the ear,
in time their dying desires grow cold,
and their lifeless faces turn white as ice.
All their dreams were flying through space, but with dimmed radiance.
Today helpless poets survive only by kissing sinners.


The stars, wiser than the sun, move ahead,
never stopping, nowhere, not even above
the most wakeful temple of the city have they ever paused.
Understanding and clarity were hiding behind a great tree,
the bread of my journey tasted bitter,
the pocket watch I carried stopped altogether.
And I found with me a magnificent shadow,
it seemed to me, the shadow of death.
Nothing precious emerged from my mouth,
I could preserve only one valuable treasure in the end, its name was laughter.


Shall I then build the sacrificial altar with ruins?
The arms of tender skeletons still show the way to dawn.
They are my beloved, though late
I am searching for a fragment of fresh laughter within the flowering shrubs,
because, truly, I fear the end of the world.
Today standing at the threshold of an abandoned temple, I
bless that gluttonous death
who once showed life
beneath his black robes.


Melted ice cream,
some magnificent unspoken love
blowing across the fields
in prolonged, painful, endless tears for happiness.
Little pigeons spread their snow-white wings
and grow pale in the heavy cigarette smoke.
Perhaps a little revolution now, or
half a resurrection would be quite good!


Long arms stretched toward the sky
disturb the life of spring.
Has anyone ever brought sorrow to the purpose of non-display?
Lions of tremendous prowess lie silently
upon vast stone tombs. In their case, before two days could pass
the third day has died.


...and if there is no other solution to all this, I would rather
lie on the bank of a quiet river.
Water's turbulence is always more nourishing than land's simplicity.