Why are you there, Moon, in the sky? Tell me
why you are there, silent Moon.
You rise at night, and go
contemplating deserts: then you set.
Are you not sated yet
with riding eternal roads?
Are you not weary, still wishing
to gaze at these valleys?
It mirrors your life,
the life of a shepherd.
He rises at dawn:
he drives his flock over the fields, sees
the flocks, the streams, the grass:
tired at evening he rests:
expecting nothing more.
Tell me, O Moon, what life is
worth to a shepherd, or
your life to you? Tell me: where
does my brief wandering lead,
or your immortal course?

      Like an old man, white-haired, infirm,
barefoot and half-naked,
with a heavy load on his shoulders,
running onwards, panting,
over mountains, through the valleys,
on sharp stones, in sand and thickets,
wind and storm, when the days burn
and when they freeze,
through torrents and marshes,
falling, rising, running faster,
faster, without rest or pause,
torn, bleeding: till he halts
where all his efforts,
all the roads, have led:
a dreadful, vast abyss
into which he falls, headlong, forgetting all.
Virgin Moon,
such is the life of man.

      Man is born in labour:
and there’s a risk of death in being born.
The very first things he learns
are pain and anguish: from the first
his mother and father
console him for being born.
Then as he grows
they both support him, go on
trying, with words and actions,
to give him heart,
console him merely for being human:
there’s nothing kinder
a parent can do for a child.
Yet why bring one who needs
such comforting to life,
and then keep him alive?
If life is a misfortune,
why grant us such strength?
Such is the human condition,
inviolate Moon.
But you who are not mortal,
care little, maybe, for my words.

      Yet you, lovely, eternal wanderer,
so pensive, perhaps you understand
this earthly life,
this suffering, the sighs that exist:
what this dying is, this last
fading of our features,
the vanishing from earth, the losing
all familiar, loving company.
And you must understand
the ‘why’ of things, and view the fruits
of morning, evening,
silence, endless passing time.
You know (you must) at what sweet love
of hers the springtime smiles,
the use of heat, and whom the winter
benefits with frost.
You know a thousand things, reveal
a thousand things still hidden from a simple shepherd.
Often as I gaze at you
hanging so silently, above the empty plain
that the sky confines with its far circuit:
or see you steadily
follow me and my flock:
or when I look at the stars blazing in the sky,
musing I say to myself:
‘What are these sparks,
this infinite air, this deep
infinite clarity? What does this
vast solitude mean? And what am I?’
So I question. About these
magnificent, immeasurable mansions,
and their innumerable family:
and the steady urge, the endless motion
of all celestial and earthly things,
circling without rest,
always returning to their starting place:
I can’t imagine
their use or fruit. But you, deathless maiden,
I’m sure, know everything.
This I know, and feel,
that others, perhaps, may gain
benefit and comfort from
the eternal spheres, from
my fragile being: but to me life is evil.

      O flock at peace, O happy creatures,
I think you have no knowledge of your misery!
How I envy you!
Not only because
you’re almost free of worries:
quickly forgetting all hardship,
every hurt, each deep fear:
but because you never know tedium.
When you lie in the shade, on the grass,
you’re peaceful and content:
and you spend most of the year
untroubled, in that state.
If I sit on the grass, in the shade,
weariness clouds my mind,
and, as if a thorn pricked me,
sitting there I’m still further
from finding peace and rest.
Yet there’s nothing I need,
and I’ve known no reason for tears.
I can’t say what you enjoy
or why: but you’re fortunate.
O my flock: there’s little still
I enjoy, and that’s not all I regret.
If you could speak, I’d ask you:
‘Tell me, why are all creatures
at peace, idle, lying
in sweet ease: why, if I lie down
to rest, does boredom seize me?’

      If I had wings, perhaps,
to fly above the clouds,
and count the stars, one by one,
or roam like thunder from crest to crest,
I’d be happier, my sweet flock,
I’d be happier, bright moon.
Or perhaps my thought
strays from truth, gazing at others’ fate:
perhaps whatever form, whatever state
it’s in, its cradle or its fold,
the day of birth is dark to one that’s born.