The early hours of morning: you still aren’t writing
(rather, you aren’t even trying), you just read lazily.
Everything is idle, quiet, full, as if
it were a gift from the muse of sluggishness,

just as earlier, in childhood, on vacation, when a colored
map was slowly scrutinized before a trip, a map
promising so much, deep ponds in the forest
like glittering butterfly eyes, mountain meadows drowning in sharp grass;

or the moment before sleep, when no dreams have appeared,
but they whisper their approach from all parts of the world,
their march, their pilgrimage, their vigil at the sickbed
(grown sick of wakefulness), and the quickening among medieval figures

compressed in endless stasis over the cathedral;
the early hours of morning, silence

-you still aren’t writing,

you still understand so much.
Joy is close.

(Translation by Clare Cavanagh)