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Category: Poetry
Rating: General
Author: Hilde Domin
Translator: Donald Wen
Unicorn
The joy
this most modest creature
this gentle unicorn
so quiet
one hears it not
if it comes, if it goes
my companion
joy
if it is thirsty
it licks the tears
of dreams.
Homecomer
All memory led away
too far
too far over the destination
before homesickness.
Yet the lovingness
of a seed leaf
without it no growth is
the sanctuary
of a hand.
The high spiral
on which
everything
we learn far too late.
Of us
In later times they will read of us.
Never have I wanted, in later times
to evoke the sympathy of schoolchildren.
Not in this way
shall I stand in a workbook.
We, condemned
to knowing
and not to action.
Our dust
will never be earth again.