Nothing turns to face us where we are.
Streams, meadows, everything apparent,
the viscous leaves of Autumn, fire-fallow Spring,
it all occurs as if for us to witness,
then burns to embers, no one left to prove it,
the glow of distant stars that sail the void.

No steed consents to ride across that open.
A lark’s song is slowly smothered out.
The mute forest wall is sad and dumb,
a mole’s path, trembling under branches.
What kind of Troy might you establish there?
What laws and tablets wrought for us to praise?

What’s seen alone is understood alone;
conditions of perception aren’t perceived.
That’s why you are, Creator, unattainable,
and all we’re left with are the tasks at hand:
to clear the snow, to sow, to feed, to harvest:
to live all winter long, and thank the summer.