One drinks one’s breakfast … The damp graveyard

earth smells of beloved blood.

City of winter … Mordant crusade

of a cart that seems to drag along

a feeling of fasting in chains!

One wants to knock on each door

and ask for who knows who; and then

see to the poor, and, crying softly,

give morsels of bread to everybody.

And to strip the rich of their vineyards

with the two saintly hands

that with a blast of light

flew off unnailed from the Cross!

Matinal eyelash, don’t raise up!

Our daily bread—give it to us,

Lord …!

All my bones belong to others;

maybe I stole them!

I took for my own what was perhaps

meant for another;

and I think that, had I not been born,

another poor man would be drinking this coffee!

I’m a lousy thief … Where will I go?

And in this cold hour, when the earth

smells of human dust and is so sad,

I want to knock on every door

and beg who knows who, forgive me,

and bake him morsels of fresh bread

here, in the oven of my heart …!