This quill is a wand;
I wave it about

All is flux.
The wet wars against the dry,
The cold against the hot,

Is there an after-taste of life in these graves? And in the flowers’ mouths do bees find the hint of a word refusing speech?

There stands death, a bluish distillate
in a cup without a saucer. Such a strange
place to find a cup: standing on

Oh the losses into the All, Marina, the stars that are falling!
We can’t make it larger, wherever we fling ourselves, to whatever
star we may go! In the Whole, all things are already numbered.

Now shall I praise the cities, those long-surviving
(I watched them in awe) great constellations of earth.
For only in praising is my heart still mine, so violently

Oh tear-filled one who, like a sky held back,
grows heavy above the landscape of her sorrow.
And when she weeps, the gentle raindrops fall,

 I have my dead, and I have let them go,
and was amazed to see them so contented,
so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful,

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. 

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?