Liebe, meine liebe, I had not hoped to be so poor The night winds reach like the blind breath of the world in a rhythm without mind, gusting and beating as if to destroy us, battering our poverty and all the land's flat and cold and dark under iron snow the dog leaps in the wind barking, maddened with winter, and his voice claps again and again down the valley like tatters of revolutionary pennants birches cry and hemlocks by the brook stand hunched and downcast with their hands in their pockets Liebe, the world is wild and without intention how far this might be from the night of Christmas if it were not for you. Down the reaching wind shrieks of starlight bear broken messages among mountains where shadows plunge yet our brightness is unwavering @3Kennst du das land wo die zitronen bluhn, im dunkeln laub die goldorangen . . . liebe@1 art thou singing It is a question partly of the tree with our stars and partly of your radiance brought from the land where legends flower to this land but more than these our bright poverty is a house in the wind and a light on the mountain Liebe, our light rekindled in this remoteness from the other land, in this dark of the blue mountain where only the winds gather is what we are for the time that we are what we know for the time that we know How gravely and sweetly the poor touch in the dark. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org |