Is a well amid wet grass the road abuts.
A layer of humus where oak beams once stood
gives two clumps of wild loosestrife the guts
to stand up tall like trees within a wood.

Two bands of stalks it lies between.
Against them, right and left, its legs are packed,
Rising to hips quite worthy of a queen,
old gold lying on a millstone that's cracked.

From above between two purple patches viewed,
Recumbent golden flesh of a Sybil divine
in a Mycenaean shaft, but maddeningly crude
masked upon the slivers she can recline

from breaches in the Ardennes cellar wall.
The silence thickens when the mask is broken,
river ravine air forms a calm, enduring hall
when the clenched jaw releases words unspoken:

"All you call gold may be just bronze and brown.
I at my level see the roots that bind the ground
and grey fungi made of glued moth down,
and past my hand ants lug their larvae round.'

Translated by Paul Vincent