On Living

Living is no laughing matter:        you must live with great seriousness                like a squirrel, for example—        I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,                I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Living is no laughing matter:        you must take it seriously,        so much so and to such a degree      that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,                                your back to the wall,        or else in a laboratory                in your white coat and safety glasses,                you can die for people—             even for people whose faces you've never seen,             even though you know living                is the most real, the most beautiful thing.        I mean, you must take living so seriously             that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees—             and not for your children, either,             but because although you fear death you don't believe it,             because living,

I mean, weighs heavier.

Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery—which is to say we might not get                    from the white table.

Even though it's impossible not to feel sad                    about going a little too soon,we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,we'll look out the window to see it's raining,or still wait anxiously                    for the latest newscast…Let's say we're at the front—          for something worth fighting for, say.

There, in the first offensive, on that very day,          we might fall on our face, dead.

We'll know this with a curious anger,    but we'll still worry ourselves to death    about the outcome of the war, which could last years.

Let's say we're in prisonand close to fifty,and we have eighteen more years, say,                   before the iron doors will open.

We'll still live with the outside,with its people and animals, struggle and wind—                      I mean with the outside beyond the walls.

I mean, however and wherever we are,    we must live as if we will never die.

This earth will grow cold,a star among stars         and one of the smallest,a gilded mote on blue velvet—         I mean this, our great earth.

This earth will grow cold one day,not like a block of iceor a dead cloud evenbut like an empty walnut it will roll along         in pitch-black space…You must grieve for this right now—you have to feel this sorrow now—for the world must be loved this much                    if you're going to say "I lived"…Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)