All this stood upon her and was the worldand stood upon her with all its fear and graceas trees stand, growing straight up, imagelessyet wholly image, like the Ark of God,and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.
As she endured it all: bore up underthe swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,serenely as a woman carrying watermoves with a full jug.
Till in the midst of play,transfiguring and preparing for the future,the first white veil descended, gliding softlyover her opened face, almost opaque there,never to be lifted off again, and somehowgiving to all her questions just one answer:
In you, who were a child once-in you.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
