Tonight, like a night, like all the others
ever on earth, when we children ached
for what we did not know, morning seemed
only as far away as opening the door,
of standing quietly on the kitchen floor;
these things defy our saying, they are dumb
as our feet, their steps laid before them,
their fears a whole family gnawing at food
cold and dead before our noses…
I am surprised my blood is as red as blood.
If I seem strange to you, suddenly, and far away,
as far away as the country you have loved
and left, quietly as a slip of paper slips off a table.
I stab at what I know, forgive me, and all
of us, and you, the most difficult of all
                  warm-blooded creatures,
my love, I don’t even know how to say it, all
at once those simple things stutter as if
they had never been before, and my imagination fails me
at last; I have no need for it, if tomorrow comes.