Jane ’s Reviews > Poems 1916 > Status Update

The sea has broken thousands of toys and thrown them up on the sand -
in vain I seek an ornament to give my beauty brilliance.
Come, sit down with me, I shall tell you about my sorrows,
we shall talk with one another of secrets.
You will show me your beauty and your way of looking
and I shall offer you my silence and my custom of listening.

In far-off lands stand the great stones
on which my thoughts rest.
It was a foreigner who wrote the strange words
on the hard board that is called my soul.
Days and nights I lie and think
about things that never happened:
my thirsty soul was once given a drink.

In the shadow of the rocks my wildness stays awake,
ready to fly at the slightest whisper, at approaching steps...

I have a door to all four winds.
I have a golden door to the east – for love that never comes,
I have a door for day and another for sadness,
I have a door for death – that one is always open

I live on in the sweetness of old days
with strangers who build new dwellings
on blue hills up to the edge of the sky,
I talk softly with the captured trees
and comfort them sometimes.
How slowly time consumes the core of things,
and soundlessly treads fate’s heavy heel.

O conqueror with cold eyes,
I take the crown you reach to me,
it bows my head down to my heart...