“And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can only make one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.
History is similar to individual lives in this respect…..

….History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.”

translated by Michael Henry Heim

The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orino plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.

The rainy Pleiads wester
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me.

SEA GULL
who flaps his wings
over my head
in the blue air,

you GULL up there
dive down
come here
take me with you
in the air!

Wings flash by
my mind’s eye
and I’m up there sailing
in the cool air,
a-a-a-a-a-ah,
in the air.

translated by Knut Rasmussen