“Get up! Take your wife and two daughters (...) Escape for your soul!
Do not look behind you and do not stand still (...)”
Genesis
Bring me with you,
wherever you go,
like a shadow behind you.
Without looking back
at the cities
and at the living,
without even thinking of them,
of the hours
and the pleasures,
of the oases that grow dark
in undulating waves
over the green and scarlet
of the dry and arid earth
and that languish,
pallid,
in the dust of the wind
of sandals.
Bring me with you,
wherever you go,
like a shadow trailing behind you
in your footprints
and in your memory,
in the tracks of your feet over rocks.
Like a blind and coarse shadow:
the sand in the ripples
of the sea,
the foam in the hair
of statues
made of salt.
Translated by William Glenn
and Alexandra van de Kamp
