There is no one between you and me.

Neither a plant drawing sap from the depths of earth

nor an animal, nor a man,

nor wind walking between the clouds.

The most beautiful bodies are like transparent glass.

The most powerful flames like water washing the tired feet of travelers.

The greenest trees like lead blooming in the thick of the night.

Love is sand swallowed by parched lips.

Hatred is a salty jug offered to the thirsty.

Roll on, rivers; raise your hands,

cities! I, a faithful son of the black earth, shall return to the black earth.

as if my life had not been,

as if not my heart, not my blood,

not my duration

had created words and songs

but an unknown, impersonal voice,

only the flapping of waves, only the choir of winds

and the autumnal sway

of the tall trees.

There is no one between you and me

and to me strength is given.

White mountains graze on terrestrial plains,

to the sea they go, their watering place,

new and new, suns lean over

a valley of a small, dark river where I was born.

I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith

but I received strength, it tears the world apart.

I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores

and a young wave will cover my trace. O darkness!

Tainted by the first glare of the dawn,

like a lung taken out of a ripped-up beast,

you are rocking, you are sinking.

How many times I have floated with you,

transfixed in the middle of the night,

hearing some voice above your horror-stricken church;

a cry of grouse, a rustle of the heath were stalking in you

and two apples shone on the table

or open scissors glittered—

and we were alike:

apples, scissors, darkness, and I

under the same immobile

Assyrian, Egyptian, and Roman

moon.

Seasons come and go, men and women mate,

children in half-sleep run their hands across the wall

and draw lands with a finger wet with saliva.

Forms come and go, what seemed invincible crumbles.

But amid the States rising from the sea,

amid demolished streets where one day

mountains will loom made of a fallen planet,

against what is past and what is to pass

youth defends itself, austere as the sundust,

in love neither with good nor with evil,

all tossed under your immense feet,

so that you may crush it, so that you may step on it,

so that your breath move the wheel

and a frail structure shake with motion,

so that you give to it hunger and to others wine, salt, and bread.

The sound of the horn still is not heard

calling the dispersed, those who lie in the valleys.

On the frozen ground as yet no rumble of the last cart.

There is no one between you and me.