By dark

By dark it will be time for me to go again. Don't look my way, just as you didn't when I arrived. But don't let the dust settle on the dark mirror. Ashes to ashes. It doesn't always have to be that way. Keep a door open for me. Nothing settles, capstones shift. A Jewish thought, a sound thought.

Today, you tell yourself, greyness doesn't matter, the learning of books falls to the side. How right you were after all, Bulleh! What remains? Not thought, not cleverness, neither philosophy nor theology, slowness or quickness. Music, poetry, art? Yes, all that is unsaid, mysterious. But more than this: the curvature of your hands as you hold water, the capacity and the willingness of your hands to form a circle in your life. Again, and again.

This one thought was with me from morning. By dark it would be gone. I saw raindrops fall and flash in a puddle; concentric circles overlapped, but remained circles, with their own still point, their own reflected worlds.

I looked for G. Hill and W.S.Merwin (for anton) but the first words that came my way were:

Aus dem zerscherbten
Wahn
Steh ich auf
und seh meiner Hand zu,
wie sie den einen
ein zigen
Kreis zieht

which someone translated as:

I stand
up from the shatter of madness
and watch my hand
trace the one
single
circle.
---Celan.

days