As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.

The secret of secrets is inside me again.

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.

Let whoever wants to, relax in the south, And bask in the garden of paradise. Here is the essence of north—and it's autumn I've chosen as this year's friend.

A land not mine, still forever memorable, the waters of its ocean chill and fresh. Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk, and the air drunk, like wine, late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pinetrees. Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.

We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and our former riches.