Perhaps one day I shall remember
the muffled sound of four-wheel drive
over the farmyard’s January snow,
leaving early in the morning,
swiftly clipped
at the turn around the corner,
when all is finally over,
by accident or discord,
far out in an already rickety old age

I fear the emptiness
in such a time,
and pray, with no one to pray to,
vainly for mercy,
which befalls no one at all

But my day has seven gates of silver,
one ajar;
my night seven wells of gold,
pregnant with perilous words

Bright tasks are the need of the days

I illuminate the dark with an absence;
dazzle the light with my open presence

Sing me the twelve-voiced madrigal of distances!