Keep flowing, street.
Without you, I have no one to meet.
The house that stands next to you,
With books of rivers, rivers of emerald green—and blue
Ponds, which tremble beneath the azure, too,
Is a house where she, perhaps, was born,
With her brother, and the mother still tender and unshorn.
I find a street that started without her, in a distant country,
A country of boats, who brought babies by boat,
Babies so young they do not sing,
But in their mothers’ arms, with closed eyes, cling—
For all the crying they once did
When the world was young and green and the terrible father hid,
Has worn them out.
But the father came
And built roads and streets and buildings, and down this street
I came with you to find her,
To trace streets back,
Back, back, before our love, and before this lack.
Why did I weep when I saw pictures of her family?
Why did she make me weep with joy?
She had lost so much love. Was it my fate to annoy,
Because I was happier in my family and in my life,
Than her, sad, like the thin edge of a thin knife?
