poem on a photograph

Sad in a photograph in a forest before spring.
Bare trees penetrate slowly
my soul and the rustle of last year is in my feet.
But the words ‘before nightfall’ are still sweet
in my ears and as soft as the inner side of prophesy.

At noon my voice rose like a sudden wind
and I bought a suitcase with a zipper for my travel.
God, the things one buys oneself in a life,
also shrouds, also a gravestone.

I washed my hands in front of the mirror and knew,
what created man, created death.
And of the five that were once together,
only three are left, and they are strewn.

God will raise the dead, perhaps. But rifts
he will not heal, nor fractures will he close,
even the one in the road outside your house
will grow longer and wider out into the world.

(trans. Ayala Byron, Antonia Pont)