It is cold in the vast and unprotected slaughter-house of the heavens,
a suffering that is remote and without defences,
the enormous weight of clouds, of squalls and gales,
torn into tatters a landscape laid waste,
torn into tatters across the country.

Over the unprotected fields,
the dance is all of kelp and seaweed and of excluded voices,
of drownings and murmurings of drowning.

Out in the marsh that’s black and still and stagnant, where nothing is reflected,
deserted and benumbed like a pallid cloth that no one may see,
that no one will wander over footstep by footstep,
in a slithering slide across that black marble,
without any voice, or any condolence,
the moon passes by,
disquiet.

Like an incandescence the moon is staring,
like an enchantment the moon holds sway,
like an unwonted Cinderella the moon runs away.
The wind is patrolling, fate is patrolling.

The night fixes its bluish, astonished eyes at so great a span of sky.

Away, far off, the moon goes wandering, in rut, and adrift.

At her mercy the waters and life.