Forgive Me, Land

Forgive me, land, I do not know to write poems on clods of earth. Thy rocks are hard, thy brooks deceiving, And thy soil has turned to mire of blood. Thou hast no need of me, nor of my songs, my land; Mountains echo prayer without end, The sea rhymes with sand and shells, In its murmuring, its voice swells and recedes with the rhythm. The whistle of the wind floats across the desert, The trembling of the grain then grows stronger, In the cavern of the deep, a dripstone breaks, As the Dead Sea buries its victims. Knock upon thy peaks with flakes of white snow; Into the blue of thine eyes—who dares directly stare? For him thou didst play the basalt rocks Thousands of years ago, For thou alone art the song. And I shall become thy clods of earth, Thy song shall yet sound after me. Forgive me, land, I do not know to write poems on clods of earth.