Only to go along

Only to go along, only to go along,

always there is spring somewhere,

there is rain somewhere.

Only to go along, only to go hand in hand with spring

where there was a desert yesterday, where he who goes

was himself a desert yesterday, full of mirages and memories

where red and yellow poppies like armies

rise from the dead;

only to go and see with one’s own eyes there’s no need to stay,

no need to finish anything before going on, no need to guard the grave

on this morning of the resurrection of the yellow poppies.

Only to go along, no need to take a thing,

no need to return, no need to return from that

third morning of desert flowers

to oneself, to one’s headache, angina pectoris, white bedsheets,

the place of one’s grave:

only to see, only to be with him,

to be with poppies, cacti, amaryllises, mesembryanthemums.

Let him who believes in duty fold the sheets,

let someone advertise a free gravesite in the papers.

One who was sick, one who had been buried, was lost without a trace

on the third day.

Two days ago, the thunderbird broke its shell

and they all heard it: lilies, amaryllises, poppies, the hedgehog heads of cacti,

and the mesembryanthemums in their stony sleep.

Yesterday the grass burned on the savannah, the dry blades of grass.

and today they are all here, only you have to come to see –