Throw a few more logs
on to the sun,
in a few billion years,
they say, it will
go out.
When there's no firewood left
you can use the meadows
that could just as well have been woodland,
then the mountains, the moon and the sky
of which we don't know for sure
that they are not wood.
Just keep throwing
something on to it,
a few logs,
a few lives.
For look, already a flicker
passes over our faces,
now they are handsome, now ugly,
now they are day, now they're night,
now they are seasons, now years.

Translated by Michael Hamburger