Third Book: The Book of Poverty and Death

Summary

Perhaps I am isolate in immense mountains,

like ore, wandering in adamantine veins,

and am too deep to see their end, or beyond

into distance. Everything is proximity

and proximity has turned to stone.

And I am no expert in the lore of pain —

this great thickness of dark diminishes me;

but if you're there, be heaviness, break in:

your whole hand reaching me, and I

affecting you with my entire crying.

You: mountain that is when mountains came —

hang without shelter, peak bare of a name,

eternal snow in which the stars fall lame,

bearer of those valleys of cyclamen

that give out every perfume of the earth;

you, mouth and minaret of every mountain

(from which no call to prayer as yet rang):

Am I traversing you? Walking the basalt

within, like unprospected, unmined metal?

Awed, I fill your clefts and faults, feel

round me the rock-hardness of your wall.

Or is it just the angst that I am in?

Potent angst before over-swollen cities

in which you have stood me, buried to the chin?

O that someone had put you right about them:

leading so aberrant, crazed a life

Du stündest auf, du Sturm aus Anbeginn,

und triebest sie wie Hülsen vor dir hin …

Und willst du jetzt von mir: so rede recht, —

so bin ich nichtmehr Herr in meinem Munde,

der nichts als zugehn will wie eine Wunde;

und meine Hände halten sich wie Hunde

an meinen Seiten, jedem Ruf zu schlecht.

Du zwingst mich, Herr, zu einer fremden Stunde.