I don't hear anything but the sound of the shore and the water,
The resigned sadness of a spring that weeps
Or a rock that sheds one tear each hour,
[Or]1 the indistinct shivering of the leaves of the birch.

I do not sense the river carrying the boat,
But it is the blossoming shore that goes past, while I remain;
And in the watery depths that I graze with my eyes,
The reflected blue sky trembles like a curtain.

One might say that the waters meander in their sleep,
Vacillating, and no longer know the bank from the slope:
Even a flower that one throws in hesitates to choose.

And, like this flower, everything that man desires
Could be placed along the river of my life
Without teaching me which way my own desire lies.