Message to All the Living

I have no desire to halt halfway, To grow bitter prematurely and old, To wither into arrogance and pride, And forget what it feels like to be alive!

The prose of ordinary days—pedantic order of letters. I gather several rhymes for each word— I choose the best, its perfect sound Allows me to feel myself alive.

But why else breathe, drink the dampness of days, And bathe in grasses, enraptured like a child? So that sometime, with ants in silver hair, I might recall, recognize, seize life within myself!

Against the current—waves, convulsions, predators, For human tempering was never simple. Yet all my wounds, all my bruises Help me feel myself alive.

And a man runs above the chasm in rye fields, Not knowing if he'll manage the next step. But this danger, perhaps, is what life is— And there's no nobler finish than a leap.

And when it shakes and hurls into darkness, When consciousness scatters like opium's forgetting, Grant, O Lord, that in the fog of earthly despair, I not forget: the end is not death, but aimless, tedious life.

Grant, O Lord, to the unbroken—a high and joyful spirit, And to the freedom-loving—grant the summits' horizons! And to all—understanding: life is perpetual motion, Only in movement can we feel ourselves alive.

I have no desire to stop in tears, Though at the line of resistance there'll be both crimea and rhyme… In the salute of rainbows, in the thunder's deep bass— I read the Lord's message to all the living.

And falling once again, suppressing sharp pain, Letting mockery or pity pass through my ears, I laugh, calm the trembling of heated veins— And in this contrast I comprehend life within myself!