For moments at a time, the distance is silent,

And all the mountains grow light

Blue overhead, and glow in the moist

November air like young white ornaments.

The hilltops stand bare

As so often, joyfully, I’ve seen them

In a better time

With fresh snow fallen beneath them.

Not a person around me, the flocks are in the valley,

Abandoned meadows lie still in their winter nakedness.

In a cool resting place, I measure the distance

With a peaceful gaze, and I see the blue of the evening,

And sense the first star behind the ridge,

And, breathing in, I sense the approaching

Frost and dew. Then, with my evening shiver,

Memory comes back to me

And fury and suffering and deep lamentation—

So much for my joy in wandering.

And again my thoughts stand up

Trembling over the distant struggle,

Inhale gangrene, inhale the reek of the battle,

Tremble with thousands of the wounded, the dying, the sick,

And search, with blundering feelings,

For beloved brothers in the blasting and tearing of the battle,

And cling like children to the hands of their good mother

Grateful and full of anguish for my fatherland.