Round, frozen in its oceans, transparent
like a cell under the microscope
or horizontal with mountains planted firmly above fields
with the tongue of rivers and the stretched out sea.

Every now and then I have an inkling of vertigo:
we're turning faster. Asleep, I cry out "I'm falling"
and then I feel space, blackness, the stars at the nape of my neck,
fear which vomits forth a thousand spheres.

"Oh that would be hell" you say and doze off.
So I meditate on hell. It's enough if the curtain's weight
tugs the rings along the glass . . . with precision I see:
the marching of a line of ants, the vast starry night.

I try to take hold of hell by its border
(a strip of black, emptiness, fear)
to make it whirl in the courtyard as the fir-tree does in the sky
to become the insect that I've always been:
that's born and forgets itself in the air.