Ballad of Lost Time


                            I



I have lost time
and I have lost the journey . . .

Nor do I know where I have gone . . .
But yes I saw a landscape
painted in ochre:
faded . . .

Mud, clay, mist; fog, mist, fog
of a turbid fur,
of black feathers.
And mediocre lights. And mediocre lights.
I also saw erect
pines:  they pointed to a confused dome,
ominous, abstruse,
and a grey horizon of circumspect boundaries.
I also saw grave
birds,
grave birds of murky feathers
-- antithetic to man --
I listened to silences, to mutes, without name,
who staggered drunk in the fog . . .
Mud, clay, mist; fog, mist, fog.

I don’t know where I have gone,
and I have lost the journey,
and I have lost time . . .


                             II




I have lost time
and I have lost the journey . . .

Nor do I know where I have gone . . .
But I knew of a twilight of fire
crackling:  voluminous weeds
and burnt lilacs!
(other springs like tranquil emeralds
dissolving).
I sensed, lewdly, capricious odors!
Boiling chrysoprase
shone luxuriously
over the bucolic plains!
Reds I saw and rubies, tremulous wheatfields
in the kiss of caressing winds!
Bleeding poppies I saw, blue-green eras!
I saw wooded fauna:
refined extravagant palaces
All in accord with whistles and flutes,
hunting horns, pastoral bassoons,
and the languid piano
chopinesque,
and unwary voices
and mezzo-men
and the mezzo-soprano.

Nor do I know where I have gone . . .
and I have lost the journey
and I have lost time . . .


                            III



And I have lost time
and I have lost the journey . . .

Nor do I know where I have gone . . .
to see the landscape
in ochre,
faded,
and to see the twilight of fire!

Having been able to watch the hidden
garden in my mediocre worlds!
or having watched without seeing:  sly game,
pointed ruse, subtle strategy, of the Deaf, the Cold, the Blind.



Leon de Greiff