Homage to Soren Kierkegaard

“Work out your own salvation

with fear and trembling.”

I was already an old man when I was born.

Small with a curved back, he dragged his leg when walking

the streets of Copenhagen. “Little Kierkegaard,”

they called him. Some meant it kindly. The more one suffers

the more one acquires a sense of the comic.

His hair rose in waves six inches above his head.

Save me, O God, from ever becoming sure.

What good is faith if it is not irrational?

Christianity requires a conviction of sin.

As a boy tending sheep on the frozen heath,

his starving father cursed God for his cruelty.

His fortunes changed. He grew rich and married well.

His father knew these blessings were God’s punishment.

All would be stripped away. His beautiful wife died,

then five of his children. Crippled Soren survived.

The self-consuming sickness unto death is despair.

What the age needs is not a genius but a martyr.

Soren fell in love, proposed, then broke the engagement.

No one, he thought, could bear his presence daily.

My sorrow is my castle. His books were read

but ridiculed. Cartoons mocked his deformities.

His private journals fill seven thousand pages.

You could read them all, he claimed, and still not know him.

He who explains this riddle explains my life.

When everyone is Christian, Christianity

does not exist. The crowd is untruth. Remember

we stand alone before God in fear and trembling.

At forty-two he collapsed on his daily walk.

Dying he seemed radiant. His skin had become

almost transparent. He refused communion

from the established church. His grave has no headstone.

Now with God’s help I shall at last become myself.

Progress Report

It’s time to admit I’m irresponsible.

I lack ambition. I get nothing done.

I spend the morning walking up the fire road.

I know every tree along the ridge.

Reaching the end, I turn around. There’s no point

to my pilgrimage except the coming and the going.

Then I sit and listen to the woodpecker

tapping away. He works too hard.

Tonight I will go out to watch the moon rise.

If only I could move that slowly.

I have no plans. No one visits me.

No need to change my clothes.

What a blessing just to sit still–

a luxury only the lazy can afford.

Let the dusk settle on my desk.

No one needs to hear from me today.

Marriage of Many Years

Most of what happens happens beyond words.

The lexicon of lip and fingertip

defies translation into common speech.

I recognize the musk of your dark hair.

It always thrills me, though I can’t describe it.

My finger on your thigh does not touch skin—

it touches your skin warming to my touch.

You are a language I have learned by heart.

This intimate patois will vanish with us,

its only native speakers. Does it matter?

Our tribal chants, our dances round the fire

performed the sorcery we most required.

They bound us in a spell time could not break.

Let the young vaunt their ecstasy. We keep

our tribe of two in sovereign secrecy.

What must be lost was never lost on us

The Angel with the Broken Wing

I am the Angel with the Broken Wing,
The one large statue in this quiet room.
The staff finds me too fierce, and so they shut
Faith’s ardor in this air-conditioned tomb.

The docents praise my elegant design
Above the chatter of the gallery.
Perhaps I am a masterpiece of sorts—
The perfect emblem of futility.

Mendoza carved me for a country church.
(His name’s forgotten now except by me.)
I stood beside a gilded altar where
The hopeless offered God their misery.

I heard their women whispering at my feet—
Prayers for the lost, the dying, and the dead.
Their candles stretched my shadows up the wall,
And I became the hunger that they fed.

I broke my left wing in the Revolution
(Even a saint can savor irony)
When troops were sent to vandalize the chapel.
They hit me once—almost apologetically.

For even the godless feel something in a church,
A twinge of hope, fear? Who knows what it is?
A trembling unaccounted by their laws,
An ancient memory they can’t dismiss.

There are so many things I must tell God!
The howling of the damned can’t reach so high.
But I stand like a dead thing nailed to a perch,
A crippled saint against a painted sky.

Pity the Beautiful

Pity the beautiful,
the dolls, and the dishes,
the babes with big daddies
granting their wishes.

Pity the pretty boys,
the hunks, and Apollos,
the golden lads whom
success always follows.

The hotties, the knock-outs,
the tens out of ten,
the drop-dead gorgeous,
the great leading men.

Pity the faded,
the bloated, the blowsy,
the paunchy Adonis
whose luck’s gone lousy.

Pity the gods,
no longer divine.
Pity the night
the stars lose their shine.

The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet

The tales we tell are either false or true,
But neither purpose is the point. We weave
The fabric of our own existence out of words,
And the right story tells us who we are.
Perhaps it is the words that summon us.
The tale is often wiser than the teller.
There is no naked truth but what we wear.

So let me bring this story to our bed.
The world, I say, depends upon a spell
Spoken each night by lovers unaware
Of their own sorcery. In innocence
Or agony the same words must be said,
Or the raging moon will darken in the sky.
The night grow still. The winds of dawn expire.

And if I’m wrong, it cannot be by much.
We know our own existence came from touch,
The new soul summoned into life by lust.
And love’s shy tongue awakens in such fire—
Flesh against flesh and midnight whispering—
As if the only purpose of desire
Were to express its infinite unfolding.

And so, my love, we are two lunatics,
Secretaries to the wordless moon,
Lying awake, together or apart,
Transcribing every touch or aching absence
Into our endless, intimate palaver,
Body to body, naked to the night,
Appareled only in our utterance.

The Apple Orchard

You won’t remember it—the apple orchard
We wandered through one April afternoon,
Climbing the hill behind the empty farm.

A city boy, I’d never seen a grove
Burst in full flower or breathed the bittersweet
Perfume of blossoms mingled with the dust.

A quarter mile of trees in fragrant rows
Arching above us. We walked the aisle,
Alone in spring’s ephemeral cathedral.

We had the luck, if you can call it that,
Of having been in love but never lovers—
The bright flame burning, fed by pure desire.

Nothing consumed, such secrets brought to light!
There was a moment when I stood behind you,
Reached out to spin you toward me . . . but I stopped.

What more could I have wanted from that day?
Everything, of course. Perhaps that was the point—
To learn that what we will not grasp is lost.

Orchestra

Climbing the scales three octaves at a time,
I search for you among the high notes where
the tender flute resides. But where are your
sweet eyelashes? Not there.

Then I descend among the sunlit brasses—
their funnels glistening like fountain tips.
I let them splash me with their streaming gold,
but I can’t find your lips.

Then daring ever deeper I explore
the depths the elemental strings command.
Their bows will not create a miracle
without your stroking hand.

The orchestra is still. The score is blank.
Cold as a slide rule the brasses, strings, and flute.
Sonorous lover, when will you return?
The orchestra is mute.

Translated from the Romanian of Nina Cassian

Especially in Weeping

Especially in weeping
the soul reveals
its presence
and through secret pressure
changes sorrow into water.
The first budding of the spirit
is in the tear,
a slow and transparent word.
Then following this elemental alchemy
thought turns itself into substance
as real as a stone or an arm.
And there is nothing uneasy in the liquid
except the mineral
anguish of matter.

Translated from the Italian of Valerio Magrelli

Entrance

Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight,
Out of the room that lets you feel secure.
Infinity is open to your sight.
Whoever you are.
With eyes that have forgotten how to see
From viewing things already too well-known,
Lift up into the dark a huge, black tree
And put it in the heavens: tall, alone.
And you have made the world and all you see.
It ripens like the words still in your mouth.
And when at last you comprehend its truth,
Then close your eyes and gently set it free.

Translated from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke.

On Approaching Forty

The thought pursues me through this dreary town
where the wind sweeps down from the high plateau
and where a diving chimney swift can cut
the slender thread of mountains far away.

So soon come forty years of restlessness,
of tedium, of unexpected joy,
quick as a gust of wind in March is quick
to scatter light and rain. Soon come delays,
snatched from the straining hands of those I love,
torn from my haunts, the customs of my years
suddenly crushed to make me understand.
The tree of sorrow shakes its branches…

The years rise like a swarm around my shoulders.
Nothing has been in vain. This is the work
which all complete together and alone,
the living and the dead, to penetrate
the impenetrable world, down open roads,
down mineshafts of discovery and loss,
and learned from many loves or only one,
from father down to son–till all is clear.

And having said this, I can start out now,
easy in the eternal company
of all things living, of all things dead,
to disappear in either dust or fire,
if any fire endures beyond its flame.

Translated from the Italian of Mario Luzi

Summer Storm

We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.

We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.

The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.

To my surprise, you took my arm–
A gesture you didn’t explain–
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.

Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.

I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn’t speak another word
Except to say goodnight.

Why does that evening’s memory
Return with this night’s storm–
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won’t stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.

Palabras

El mundo no necesita de palabras. Sabe expresarse
en luz solar, hojas y sombras. Las piedras en el sendero
no son menos reales por yacer sin que nadie las catalogue ni las cuente.
Las hojas desenvueltas sólo hablan el dialecto del puro ser.
El beso es siempre beso por completo.No hacen falta palabras.

Y una palabra se transforma en algo menos o en otra:
casto, ilícito, superficial, conyugal, furtivo.
Aun al llamarlo beso traicionamos el agitarse de las manos
que recorren la piel o se aferran a un hombro,
el lento arquearse del cuello o la rodilla,
el encuentro en silencio de las lenguas.

Sin embargo las piedras se vuelven menos reales
para quienes no pueden nombrarlas o leer
las mudas sílabas sepultadas en el sílice.
Ver una piedra roja es menos que verla como jaspe,
metamórfico cuarzo, pariente del pedernal que los kiowa
tallaron como puntas de sus flechas. Nombrar es conocer y recordar.

La luz del sol no necesita elogios cuando punza
las nubes de la lluvia, cuando pinta
de claridad las piedras y las hojas y al final
disuelve cada gota luminosa en las nubes que la engendraron.
La luz del día no necesita elogios
y sin embargo siempre la elogiamos
—es mayor que nosotros y que todas
las ligeras palabras que reunimos.

Translated by José Emilio Pacheco,

Majority

Now you’d be three,
I said to myself,
seeing a child born
the same summer as you.

Now you’d be six,
or seven, or ten.
I watched you grow
in foreign bodies.

Leaping into a pool, all laughter,
or frowning over a keyboard,
but mostly just standing,
taller each time.

How splendid your most
mundane action seemed
in these joyful proxies.
I often held back tears.

Now you are twenty-one.
Finally, it makes sense
that you have moved away
into your own afterlife.

The Lost Garden

If ever we see those gardens again,
The summer will be gone—at least our summer.
Some other mockingbird will concertize
Among the mulberries, and other vines
Will climb the high brick wall to disappear.

How many footpaths crossed the old estate—
The gracious acreage of a grander age—
So many trees to kiss or argue under,
And greenery enough for any mood.
What pleasure to be sad in such surroundings.

At least in retrospect. For even sorrow
Seems bearable when studied at a distance,
And if we speak of private suffering,
The pain becomes part of a well-turned tale
Describing someone else who shares our name.

Still, thinking of you, I sometimes play a game.
What if we had walked a different path one day,
Would some small incident have nudged us elsewhere
The way a pebble tossed into a brook
Might change the course a hundred miles downstream?

The trick is making memory a blessing,
To learn by loss the cool subtraction of desire,
Of wanting nothing more than what has been,
To know the past forever lost, yet seeing
Behind the wall a garden still in blossom.

Litany

This is a litany of lost things,
a canon of possessions dispossessed,
a photograph, an old address, a key.
It is a list of words to memorize
or to forget–of amo, amas, amat,
the conjugations of a dead tongue
in which the final sentence has been spoken.

This is the liturgy of rain,
falling on mountain, field, and ocean–
indifferent, anonymous, complete–
of water infinitesimally slow,
sifting through rock, pooling in darkness,
gathering in springs, then rising without our agency,
only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew.

This is a prayer to unbelief,
to candles guttering and darkness undivided,
to incense drifting into emptiness.
It is the smile of a stone Madonna
and the silent fury of the consecrated wine,
a benediction on the death of a young god,
brave and beautiful, rotting on a tree.

This is a litany to earth and ashes,
to the dust of roads and vacant rooms,
to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun,
settling indifferently on books and beds.
This is a prayer to praise what we become,
“Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.”
Savor its taste–the bitterness of earth and ashes.

This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished,
for you, my love, my loss, my lesion,
a rosary of words to count out time’s
illusions, all the minutes, hours, days
the calendar compounds as if the past
existed somewhere–like an inheritance
still waiting to be claimed.

Until at last it is our litany, mon vieux,
my reader, my voyeur, as if the mist
steaming from the gorge, this pure paradox,
the shattered river rising as it falls–
splintering the light, swirling it skyward,
neither transparent nor opaque but luminous,
even as it vanishes–were not our life.

Dana Gioia’s note on “The Litany”

I could say a great many things about “The Litany,” but most of them would matter far more to the author than to anyone else. The poem will, I suppose, seem difficult to readers eager for the paraphrasable content of workaday prose. I hope the poem is not opaque, but neither did I want the language to be transparent. A reader will either understand “The Litany” intuitively or not at all. It will help, though, to read the poem aloud. Its organization is musical. Though not all art aspires to the conditions of music, this poem wants to be heard and not seen. What better way than music to describe the invisible?

Words

The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other—
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

Unsaid

So much of what we live goes on inside–
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.

The Next Poem

How much better it seems now
than when it is finally done–
the unforgettable first line,
the cunning way the stanzas run.

The rhymes soft-spoken and suggestive
are barely audible at first,
an appetite not yet acknowledged
like the inkling of a thirst.

While gradually the form appears
as each line is coaxed aloud–
the architecture of a room
seen from the middle of a crowd.

The music that of common speech
but slanted so that each detail
sounds unexpected as a sharp
inserted in a simple scale.

No jumble box of imagery
dumped glumly in the reader’s lap
or elegantly packaged junk
the unsuspecting must unwrap.

But words that could direct a friend
precisely to an unknown place,
those few unshakeable details
that no confusion can erase.

And the real subject left unspoken
but unmistakable to those
who don’t expect a jungle parrot
in the black and white of prose.

How much better it seems now
than when it is finally written.
How hungrily one waits to feel
the bright lure seized, the old hook bitten.

Planting a Sequoia

All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard,
Digging this hole, laying you into it, carefully packing the soil.
Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific,
And the sky above us stayed the dull gray
Of an old year coming to an end.

In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son’s birth–
An olive or a fig tree–a sign that the earth has one more life to bear.
I would have done the same, proudly laying new stock into my father’s orchard,
A green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs,
A promise of new fruit in other autumns.

But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our native giant,
Defying the practical custom of our fathers,
Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an infant’s birth cord,
All that remains above earth of a first-born son,
A few stray atoms brought back to the elements.

We will give you what we can–our labor and our soil,
Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail,
Nights scented with the ocean fog, days softened by the circuit of bees.
We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in western light,
A slender shoot against the sunset.

And when our family is no more, all of his unborn brothers dead,
Every niece and nephew scattered, the house torn down,
His mother’s beauty ashes in the air,
I want you to stand among strangers, all young and ephemeral to you,
Silently keeping the secret of your birth.

Rough Country

Give me a landscape made of obstacles,
of steep hills and jutting glacial rock,
where the low-running streams are quick to flood
the grassy fields and bottomlands.
A place
no engineers can master–where the roads
must twist like tendrils up the mountainside
on narrow cliffs where boulders block the way.
Where tall black trunks of lightning-scalded pine
push through the tangled woods to make a roost
for hawks and swarming crows.
And sharp inclines
where twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush,
scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly
to find an unexpected waterfall,
not half a mile from the nearest road,
a spot so hard to reach that no one comes–
a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies
and nesting jays, a sign that there is still
one piece of property that won’t be owned.

Prayer

Echo of the clocktower, footstep
in the alleyway, sweep
of the wind sifting the leaves.

Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur
of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning
harvesting the sky.

Keeper of the small gate, choreographer
of entrances and exits, midnight
whisper travelling the wires.

Seducer, healer, deity or thief,
I will see you soon enough—
in the shadow of the rainfall,

in the brief violet darkening a sunset—
but until then I pray watch over him
as a mountain guards its covert ore

and the harsh falcon its flightless young.

Money

Money is a kind of poetry.– Wallace Stevens

Money, the long green,
cash, stash, rhino, jack
or just plain dough.

Chock it up, fork it over,
shell it out. Watch it
burn holes through pockets.

To be made of it! To have it
to burn! Greenbacks, double eagles,
megabucks and Ginnie Maes.

It greases the palm, feathers a nest,
holds heads above water,
makes both ends meet.

Money breeds money.
Gathering interest, compounding daily.
Always in circulation.

Money. You don’t know where it’s been,
but you put it where your mouth is.
And it talks.

Sunday Night in Santa Rosa

The carnival is over. The high tents,
the palaces of light, are folded flat
and trucked away. A three-time loser yanks
the Wheel of Fortune off the wall. Mice
pick through the garbage by the popcorn stand.
A drunken giant falls asleep beside
the juggler, and the Dog-Faced Boy sneaks off
to join the Serpent Lady for the night.
Wind sweeps ticket stubs along the walk.
The Dead Man loads his coffin on a truck.
Off in a trailer by the parking lot
the radio predicts tomorrow’s weather
while a clown stares in a dressing mirror,
takes out a box, and peels away his face.

Insomnio

Escuchas lo que tiene que decir la casa.
Tuberías ruidosas, fugas de agua en lo oscuro,
muros hipotecados que, inconformes, se trocan
y voces que se apilan en barullo infinito
de quejas cortas, como sonidos de familia
que año con año has ido aprendiendo a ignorar.

Debes oír las cosas que posees, todo aquello
por lo que trabajaste en los últimos años,
el rumor de los bienes, de cosas averiadas,
partes flojas a punto de caer desprendidas.
Enrollado en las sábanas, recuerda todos
esos rostros que nunca te fue dado amar.

Cuántas voces te habían esquivado hasta ahora,
el horno ventilado, la duela bajo el pie
y las acusaciones constantes del reloj
que cuenta los minutos registrados por nadie.
La claridad terrible que trae este momento,
la perspicacia inútil, la oscuridad intacta.

Translated by Hernán Bravo Varela.

Insomnia

Now you hear what the house has to say.
Pipes clanking, water running in the dark,
the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort,
and voices mounting in an endless drone
of small complaints like the sounds of a family
that year by year you’ve learned how to ignore.

But now you must listen to the things you own,
all that you’ve worked for these past years,
the murmur of property, of things in disrepair,
the moving parts about to come undone,
and twisting in the sheets remember all
the faces you could not bring yourself to love.

How many voices have escaped you until now,
the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot,
the steady accusations of the clock
numbering the minutes no one will mark.
The terrible clarity this moment brings,
the useless insight, the unbroken dark.

La Esposa de Provincia

Ella baja, a través de oscuros árboles,
al lago para al fin quedarse a solas.
Mientras sigue sus voces en la brisa,
ella baja. A través de oscuros árboles,
tan sólo ve los astros a lo lejos.
No alumbran el camino que ha tomado.
Ella baja a través de oscuros árboles
al lago para al fin quedarse a solas.

La noche reflejada sobre el lago,
el fuego de los astros vuelto agua.
Ella no ve los vientos que destrozan
la noche reflejada sobre el lago,
mas sabe que señalan por su bien.
Éstas son las opciones que le ofrecen:
la noche reflejada sobre el lago,
el fuego de los astros vuelto agua.

Translated by Hernán Bravo Varela,

La Escala Ardiente

Jacob
nunca subió por la escala
que se incendiaba en su sueño,
sueño opresor como piedra
en el polvo, y para cuando
él debió de levantarse
como flama para unirse
al coro aquél, ya no quiso
viajar,
así que cerró
sus ojos al Serafín
que ascendía, sin conciencia
de la distancia imposible
entre sus pasos, no pudo
mirarlos trepar la escala
brillante, desvaneciéndose
poco a poco en la dispersa
luz de los astros,
durmió
todo ese tiempo, una piedra
sobre una almohada de piedra,
temblando. La gravedad
siempre es mayor que el deseo.

“The Burning Ladder “translated by Hernán Bravo Varela,

El Fin

El Bosco lo pintó. Van Eyck, Angelico
y otros. Incluso aquellos que no fueron geniales
mostraron lo que vieron. Estos primitivos
cuyas pinturas hacen igual de bien que otras
en mostrarnos aún lo que interesa.

A diferencia nuestra, supieron que este mundo
resulta inhabitable, a lo sumo eventual,
el sutil equilibrio entre eternidades.
Y con la luz de la última mañana
supieron retratarlo como realmente es,
sin cubrirlo de césped, de nubes o de tiempo:
tan sólo una llanura pedregosa rodeada de montañas grises y afiladas
donde un gentío despertó encontrándose
desvestido, sin bienes, abandonado al cielo.

Desnudo, no es posible que oculte los pecados
con que creció la carne. La panza del glotón,
el blanco y desvalido muslo del amante.
Unos alzan sus puños contra el cielo de color gris pizarra;
los más miran en torno, furiosos, o contemplan
esas montañas frías e inaccesibles
y aguardan a lo lejos.

Infierno es su orgullosa urbe en llamas.
Ahora se detienen en las rejas y miran
parapetos y torres sutiles, chamuscados,
y en la tierra baldía, más allá del muro,
a los amortajados en su resurrección.

Y si no hay esperanza, queda al menos
la dignidad de su exasperación.

Anoche soñé que había llegado el fin. Mudo, impotente,
tan invisible como el aire, estuve
en cientos de lugares: la casa de un extraño,
una calle, un jardín y una oficina.
Y así como a un durmiente lo despiertan de un sueño,
así yo presencié lo incomprensible.
Una mujer lavaba platos en la cocina;
miró tranquilamente por su ventana mientras
escuchaba en el aire algo inesperado.
Hombres y conductores en banquetas y calles
observaron el tiempo en un cielo sin nubes
y siguieron andando. En la oficina, empleados
y secretarias vieron el reloj
sin recordar la hora. Pude ver dondequiera
un mismo y frío perfil al mismo instante:
pálidos rostros que alzan la vista a contraluz
y se agachan de nuevo con indiferencia,
tan sólo este reflejo sordo de aceptación
y después nada más, ya nada nunca más.

Translated by Hernán Bravo Varela.

The Country Wife

She makes her way through the dark trees
Down to the lake to be alone.
Following their voices on the breeze,
She makes her way. Through the dark trees
The distant stars are all she sees.
They cannot light the way she’s gone.
She makes her way through the dark trees
Down to the lake to be alone.

The night reflected on the lake,
The fire of stars changed into water.
She cannot see the winds that break
The night reflected on the lake
But knows they motion for her sake.
These are the choices they have brought her:
The night reflected on the lake,
The fire of stars changed into water.