I

Now
the clear night you enter,
Night, you who burn in our hearts.
And you wait for us,
our final, silent
nakedness.

In the wind's hand.

And the warm hands of the poplars and water
which you set trembling,
you hear how the voices of death
are nourished by their skies—
ourselves, trembling,
What strange heavens?

God sleeps there.
Leaves which you bend
rock him, the enclosed water of our hearts, nights,
dead water.

II

Across the bare sky—
of voices, of terrors that cry out, die—
you row.

With lanterns lit.
to my father i. m.

Translated by Anna Crowe