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The White Sorrow of the Spring

I left you, song of old, song of innocence,
left without regret.
For the white sorrow of the wellspring I left,
for the inconstant love of the rivers,
for a lump of sky the blueness of coal,
for the unreachable things, the most distant things.
I left you, song of old, song of innocence,
left without regret.
And now a weight of uncertainty sits
hunched on the doorstep of the morning,
repeating the same question over and over:
Is there really any value to what you think has value?

Because I know:
everything will fall silent when autumn comes,
and when they join with the seas that are theirs,
the rivers will find a love that brings them peace,
and the sky will grow ripe, made fruitful by the song
of the grain and the vines and the olives.
Only the white sorrow of the spring will remain
the same as it was, unchanged—
like an eternal yearning for distances.

Translated by Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer, 2022