not of this world

Pure beauty, benediction: you are all I gathered
From a life that was bitter and confused,
In which I learned about evil, my own and not my own.
Wonder kept seizing me, and I recall only wonder,
Risings of the sun over endless green, a universe
Of grasses, and flowers opening to the first light,
Blue outline of the mountain and a hosanna shout.
I asked, how many times, is this the truth of the earth?
How can laments and curses be turned into hymns?
What makes you need to pretend, when you know better?
But the lips praised on their own, on their own feet ran;
The heart beat strongly; and the tongue proclaimed its adoration.

And why all this ardor if death is so close:
Do you expect to hear and see and feel there?
But you know the earth is like no other place:
What continents, what oceans, what a show it is!
In the hall of pain, what abundance on the table.
The music endures, but not the music-maker:
No velvet of his survives, not even a garter.
And space-age men, in thickets, lift bows to fiddles,
Drink in their villages, squabble, let dice rattle
With the dead perched on a giddy carousel.

And I have lived a life that makes me unable
To bring myself to write an accusation.
Joy would spurt in amid the lamentation.
So what, if, in a minute I must close the book:
Life’s sweet, but it might be pleasant not to have to look.

-From “The Separate Notebooks - ‘A Mirrored Gallery’ ”