THE maidens short of stature, brown of hands,
With sickles hanging from their arms like moons,
Are drinking air from night's star-studded bowl,
And wending homewards from the woods at gloam.
And when one hums another's answer comes,
And others hum, the humming goes along ...
Can it be death wafted on ancient song?
The flickering birth of some new, radiant song?

As might a woof of mosses soft and dense,
The scented shade the deep path overbrims,
And o'er brown fields and shining bushes swims.
The shadow is like wadding under feet,
And souls uncages in deliverance, whence
Arises in the air this delicate sound
Of souls that seek each other all around,
And rob the flowers of instinct and of sense....

Less dense the shadow is ... and now is none!...
The moon's blue cheeks caress cheeks brown with sun,
The teeth are silvered whence this humming comes,
And silvered are the sickles hung from arms
And all that shines, and tinkles sweet, and hums,
It seems as it might be the delicate shiver,
The tender rustling of the stars' blue river,
Strayed from the ether into this deep path.

translated by Jethro Bithell