“No duties. I don’t have to be profound.I don’t have to be artistically perfect.Or sublime. Or edifying.I just wander. I say: ‘You were running,That’s fine. It was the thing to do.’And now the music of the worlds transforms me.My planet enters a different house.Trees and lawns become more distinct.Philosophies one after another go out.Everything is lighter yet not less odd.Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.We talk a little of district fairs,Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.That’s better than examining one’s private dreams.And meanwhile it has arrived. It’s here, invisible.Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell.”

“She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.”

“Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,I felt a door opening in me and I enteredthe clarity of early morning.One after another my former lives were departing,like ships, together with their sorrow.And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seasassigned to my brush came closer,ready now to be described better than they were before.I was not separated from people,grief and pity joined us.We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King.For where we come from there is no divisioninto Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth partof the gift we received for our long journey.Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago—a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirrorof polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us,waiting for a fulfillment.I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,as are all men and women living at the same time,whether they are aware of it or not.”

“In Rome on the Campo dei FioriBaskets of olives and lemons,Cobbles spattered with wineAnd the wreckage of flowers.Vendors cover the trestlesWith rose-pink fish;Armfuls of dark grapesHeaped on peach-down.On this same squareThey burned Giordano Bruno.Henchmen kindled the pyreClose-pressed by the mob.Before the flames had diedThe taverns were full again,Baskets of olives and lemonsAgain on the vendors' shoulders.I thought of the Campo dei FioriIn Warsaw by the sky-carouselOne clear spring eveningTo the strains of a carnival tune.The bright melody drownedThe salvos from the ghetto wall,And couples were flyingHigh in the cloudless sky.At times wind from the burningWould drift dark kites alongAnd riders on the carouselCaught petals in midair.That same hot windBlew open the skirts of the girlsAnd the crowds were laughingOn that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.Someone will read as moralThat the people of Rome or WarsawHaggle, laugh, make loveAs they pass by martyrs' pyres.Someone else will readOf the passing of things human,Of the oblivionBorn before the flames have died.But that day I thought onlyOf the loneliness of the dying,Of how, when GiordanoClimbed to his burningThere were no wordsIn any human tongueTo be left for mankind,Mankind who live on.Already they were back at their wineOr peddled their white starfish,Baskets of olives and lemonsThey had shouldered to the fair,And he already distancedAs if centuries had passedWhile they paused just a momentFor his flying in the fire.Those dying here, the lonelyForgotten by the world,Our tongue becomes for themThe language of an ancient planet.Until, when all is legendAnd many years have passed,On a great Campo dei FioriRage will kindle at a poet's word.”

“You who wronged a simple man Bursting into laughter at the crime, And kept a pack of fools around you To mix good and evil, to blur the line, Though everyone bowed down before you, Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way, Striking gold medals in your honor, Glad to have survived another day, Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date. And you’d have done better with a winter dawn, A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight.”

“He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,Of tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,Of a dignified flock of pelicans above the bay,Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,Of his having composed his words always against deathAnd of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness.”

“Forget the sufferingYou caused others.Forget the sufferingOthers caused you.The waters run and run,Springs sparkle and are done,You walk the earth you are forgetting.Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?A childlike sun grows warm.A grandson and a great-grandson are born.You are led by the hand once again.The names of the rivers remain with you.How endless those rivers seem!Your fields lie fallow,The city towers are not as they were.You stand at the threshold mute.”