Antistrophes

Oh, that you pass here, women,

here among us, in sorrow,

spared from no more than we, and yet capable

of blessing like the blessed.

Wherefrom,

when the Beloved appears,

do you take the future?

More than will ever be.

He who knows the distances

to the outermost stars

is astounded, when he beholds

the splendid spaciousness of your hearts.

How, in the Crowd, do you save it for him?

You, full of wellsprings and night.

Are you really the same

as those who, when children,

on the way to school, were roughly

shoved by their older brother?

You heal.

While we as children already

grew twisted, hideous forever,

you were like bread before the Transformation

The curtailment of childhood

was no tragedy to you. All at once

you stood there, as if

miraculously completed by God.

We, as if broken off a peak,

already as boys often too sharp

at the edges, perhaps

sometimes felicitously hewn;

we, like pieces of rock,

that tumbled onto flowers.

Flowers of the deeper Earth,

beloved of all roots,

you, sisters of Eurydice,

always full of holy returning

behind the climbing man.

We, suffering from ourselves,

like to suffer and like

suffering again from Need.

We sleep with our anger

under our pillow, like a gun.

You, who are nearly protection for them, where no one

protects. Like a shady tree to sleep under

is the thought of you

for the swarms of the lonely.