And also—the Minotaur, farmer, owner, respondent,
on the sleepless page he is the same age, a petitioner and a weaver.
To the dedicated he is light, to the detained—reaping and stoves
in the last Tauride, where the ship’s acrobat still lives.
And a marked sign is a lodger and a stepchild of the word,
right when a floorboard creaks—the first step or gesture.
This is an ovary and a backwater, returned, left again,
his best tower—for foam, for veins, for a cross.
And it depicts as melted—thinner than the cracks in a ledge,
the cursed lightness and audacity of fragile chimney swifts.
But the writing pads and grains are a doggedly learned list
on window conciseness and the stinginess of pass-through declensions.
Translated by Gerald Janecek