Five o’clock in the morning
 

The water was mirror-calm,
I dived inside the mirror,

I waded in the green water,
in the soughing of the rushes.

Birds awoke and dropped their songs
onto morning’s meadow, glad and frail,

as small as quail’s eggs,
pretty, unknowing.

Two dragonflies atop the reed.
Two birds in the hawthorn’s spikes.

Night’s battle was over, eagle no longer stalked hazel-hen,
nor owl mouse, it was over now.

In the grass, the graceful ornament of the snake.
The boreal owl calls from the forest.

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The world is a poem of my senses

The squares, the rushing cars, the trees, the dusty green
acquire their tone from me;
the world is a poem of my senses
and ceases when I die.
This proximity, this lengthy moment, the soft feel
of skin, are only in me, for me; an impression
or a ring around the illusion of my senses.
When I borrow from you an objective eye
I see (as through reversed binoculars)
how you walk along the bright streets,
the two of you, in the light of the awnings,
you are far away, ever further, still
you are, but small, disappearing.

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Into the forest stillness

I’m like a foolish elk
that sees its reflection in the water
and thinks it’s drowned.

Or what does it think?
Maybe it sees another elk there.

But it doesn’t make much difference.
I’ve got to become what I am
not what I think I am
or would like to be;
nor what you are (or the other one);

this becoming of mine is a slow undressing:
leaving the clothes of individuality
on the shore of commonality and swimming,

I’ve always got to swim across, always towards the other shore;
I once saw my anonymous shadow
                                            climb up a precipice
and disappear into the forest stillness, never to return.