Always these stones. Stones flying.
I don’t even bother watching out for them
any more. I eat and work with battered
head amid the gurgling of a dry fury.
Siege stones, poets’ stones, biblical stones,
island stones (stones of all kinds)
flow in streams down the stairways,
through the parks, down posterity’s cheeks.
And though there’s nothing in them,
nothing of gypsum, minerals or the will
(nothing of stone itself), the avalanche
never stops. They keep pelting me:
hard low-grade blades
that make even angels flinch.
Translated by Stephen M. Dickey