Surely we did not need this ( to see an inscrutable sky so
clearly) to consider God a base invention, a vile insinuation,
an impolite proposition, an attempt—alas, successful—at
overwhelming human consciences: those who persuade us
otherwise are traitors or impostors.

Elsewhere, nature longs for skies busy with other things, carting
clouds, for example. Here, the skies are clearly busy with
suffocating nature. Here, it is clear that nature is suffocating.

It remains cloistered beneath an inscrutable sky, tries pathetically
to live. Urns, statues become its interpreters, its supplicants.
But there is no answer: it's splendid

*****

                translation by Jeanine Herman