While drinking from this cup perhaps inscribed with signs of blessing and happiness in an unknown tongue, I hold it in my hand full of its own lines I can never explain. Do these two scripts agree?

Often I gazed at you in wonder: stood at the window begun
the day before, stood and gazed at you in wonder. As yet the new town
seemed denied to me, and the unpersuaded landscape kept darkening

Our road’s no wider than yours. We often fall from the height. We’re broken too, but our lack of attention doesn’t force us to climb the rope again. Your slightest mistake can kill you. 

We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most
intimate. From images that are full, the spirit’s
stream plunges down to others that suddenly must be filled;

You who never arrived
in my arms, beloved, who were lost
from the start,

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space
in which you see all forms intensified.
(Out in the Open, you would be denied

World was in the face of the beloved.
Suddenly it poured out and was gone:
world is outside, world cannot be grasped.

Hidden, wrinkled as a flush violet wedged
Humbly amid the moss, it breathes
Still wet with love that leaves

What you know, O fool, no one else does.
And what no one else knows,
I am not equal to.

His companions fell asleep on the hawsers in the stern;
and she came, took him by the hand and led him
a little ways above the shore; she lay down beside him