Paul Snoek

1933-1981 / Sint-Niklaas

No one knows why I work slenderly on the horizon

No one knows why I work slenderly on the horizon,
why my word builds its nest in the grooves of light.
All this is my silver-slicing secret.

And no one knows that it is kindness that feeds me,
that I drink up silence from the lungs of growing still.
And no one, you know, no one knows that.

For no one stays so fully within the truth as I.
There a miracle-working clarity is my power
and no one knows me, for I am invisible
in the light, that I possess like a joy.

Translated by Kendall Dunkelberg

From: Hercules, Richelieu and Nostradamus, Green Integer, Los Angeles
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