Blameless as daylight I stood looking
At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown, (wehende Mähnen)
Tails streaming against the Green Backdrop (Flatternde Schwänze vor der grünen Platanenkulisse)
of Sycamores. Sun was striking
White chapel pinnacles over the roofs, (weisse Kirchzinnen über die Dächer)
Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves
Steadily rooted though they were all flowing
Away to the left like reeds in a sea, (wie Schilfrohr im Wasser sich bog nach links)
When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye,
Needling it dark. Then I was seeing
A melding of shapes in a hot rain: (Farbenformen)
Horses warped on the altering green, (verzerrte Pferde)
Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns, (Fremdartig wie Kamel oder Einhorn)
Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome,
Beasts of oasis, a better time.
Abrading my lid, the small grain burns: (Reib ich mein Lid brennt das kleine Gran)
Red cinder around which I myself,
Horses, planets and spires revolve. (Pferde, Planeten und Türmchen rotiere)
Neither tears nor the easing flush (Weder Tränen noch Augenbäder können das Korn verscheuchen)
Of eyebaths can uneat the speck:
It sticks, and it has stuck a week.
I wear the present itch for flesh,
Blind to what will be and what was.
I dream that I am Oedipus.
What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve (Bevor die Broschennadel, die Salbe mich einspannten)
Fixed me in this paranthesis;
Horses, fluent in the wind, (Pferde, fliessend im Wind)
a place, a time gone out of mind. (ein Ort, eine Zeit entschwand.)