Give me, for my life, all lives, give me all the pain of everyone, I'm going to turn it into hope. Give me all the joys, even the most secret, because otherwise how will these things be known? I have to tell them, give me the labors of everyday, for that's what I sing.

Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything.

I am a book of snow, a spacious hand, an open meadow, a circle that waits, I belong to the earth and its winter.

And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

Your house sounds like a train at midday, the wasps buzz, the saucepans sing, the waterfall enumerates the deeds of the dew . . .

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.