For happiness the lover cannot sleep;

the clock ticktacks; the gray-haired merchant fancies

in vermeil skies a silhouetted crane,

into a hold its cargo slowly sinking.

To gloomy exiles there appears miraged

a mist, which youth with its own hue has tinted.

Amidst the agitation and the beauty

of daily life, one image everywhere

haunts me incessantly, torments and claims me:

Upon the bright-lit island of the desk

the somber facets of the open inkstand

and the white sheet of paper, and the lamp’s

unswitched-off light beneath its green glass dome.

And left athwart the still half-empty page,

my pen like a black arrow, and the wird

I did not finish writing.