The Lake

Pound, wave. Whirlwind, whirl. Pound the shore.
Ring out, bell of light and wind!
You are rising, lake, but your bottomless howl
dwindles together with the crumbling sand.

You are here, but I’ll lose you pressed behind some hill;
alone, but like a shell you open within me,
and into my sight you fall as into a dry ravine
with a kind of pang obscure and distant.

Then I know, lake: again you’ll be gone a long time,
and for the millionth time again I will feel
that you are fire, a secretly stolen flame
to burn someone’s heart, to burn someone’s blood.

But you rise with menace, with howling, with splendor,
and whatever might try in vain to escape you,
nothing will remain except shadow and sand—
the sand on the shore that thirstily drinks you.

And already that limitless drought I sense,
that unspeaking realm overgrown with black crust,
which listens not to you but to thirsting springs
as if to the rolling of two heavy words.

O lake, you are rising and with you the shore crumbles.
Hide behind your beauty. Take the shape of a howl.
The water will grasp everything, the water will dream it.
Pound, wave. Whirlwind, whirl. Pound, lake, pound.