Landscape with Little Girl
I’d like to say—to her, to both of them—
let’s lie down beneath the grass, lie in the shade
of dried-out ships, let matters of fate be left
to those plane trees, I’d like to say, look both of you!—
but I only caress the see-through sky, the sun
has shifted, there’s a green woodpecker, let’s fall sleep
I’d like to say, from now on let us always be
a carpet, a ball of yarn, but I only stand
in a cloud of laughter and come back are the words
that finally I do not say when she, external as the world,
runs to the grass and at this moment someone else is dying.
Translated by Bill Johnston