Classic Poem

There ... you are revealing your secret to me alone.

When you move through foreign cities
you hide your secrets in your grim-colored clothes,
behind black spectacles;
But here you reveal your secret to me alone.

Perhaps you saw my blood
sniff at you for a trace of its youth,
or maybe you glimpsed your houses under my skin
and so showed me what you hide.

A strange, beautiful flock
evasive to every call
hiding behind its sagging color
those frozen, inveterate tears.

Your blood surged forth unaware
on roads you had grown attuned to
blood you tried to bar from a wilted hand,
eyes brimming with beads of tears —
And where did you give away your eyes?
Beneath the stars which once shone on my cheek.

Who did you offer your leg to?
I gave it to those who will be born after me.

Look!
You who come
with half your bodies
from villages that lack their share
of the flesh of sons —

Look!
How attractive these foreign cities are,
how much a stranger needs his arm or leg there.
But you pass the city's beauty
like gracious heavenly birds,
and I keep tracking you
lost in its streets,
groping in my own rotting flesh
and entering my grave at night.