The Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 26

But you, divine one, sang to the end, when the horde

of rejected Maenads attacked you. Beautiful,

you sounded above their clamour with order;

from among the destroyers arose your uplifting music.

None of them there could crush your head or your lyre,

however they wrestled and raged, and all of the sharp

stones they hurled at your heart

went soft as they reached you, and could hear.

At last they dismembered you, hot for revenge,

while your sounds lingered on in lions and cliffs,

and in birds and trees. You are singing there still.

You lost god! You infinite trace!

Only since enmity tore you apart are we now

your hearers, and one of Nature's mouths.

The Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 17

Where, in what happily watered gardens, on what trees,

among what gently falling blossom-chalices,

ripen the exotic fruits of consolation? These delicacies--

perhaps you'll find one in the trampled field

of your destitution. Time after time,

you're struck by the size of the fruit,

its soundness, the smoothness of the rind,

and that a bird's whim or a worm's spite

didn't spoil it first. Are there trees so full of angels,

tended by slow and secret gardeners so strangely,

that they bear us fruit without being ours?

The way we ripen too soon and decay,

we shadows and shades, cannot take away

the equanimity of those calm summers.

EARLY SPRING

Harshness disappeared. Reprieve now lies
on the fields' ploughed-up grey.
Water-trickles change their intonation.
Vague endearments from the skies

drift earthwards. Pathways lead
far inland and point to it.
Unexpectedly, you see its rise
prefigured in the empty tree.