The light streams through, alas it is morning--
I cannot bear the truth in its meaning,
for I have lost my life's most precious thing:
and with it I am wrought until evening.Bear the brunt of tragedian's telling:
I'd not want to be soul's recounted fling
with crown jewels, buried sages' grieving
over lost moments, proverbs still singing.
There is a moment when I contemplate--all meaning fades in the trenches of France,
and all I love resounds, hollow as wine
no more in a chalice, bread on a plate.
My breakfast, ashes of Petite Pervenche:
wildflowers over the fields of its kind.
Where have you gone, my little flock of sheep;
have you dispersed over the Vosges's pass?
Have you strayed to another river's glass?
Have you fallen down a gully so steep?
Where is the sacrament that with you keeps
you from death's harm, and with your greenest grass:
a pastureland of Liseron des Champs,
the pleasant place where White Asphodel steeps.
I wish you had waited for your shepherd,
I, standing in the ruins of the lost,
did not see you go, nor will you to leave.
The procession for my missing, a dirge,
I singing, naive of the harsh wind's frost
on the autumn backdrop of burnished leaves.
