How small is all the vastness of childhood
when its scent on the chest is of first fields,
of wet grass,
salted flowers,
plaits of mud,
bread of hands…
No metaphor can say you.
Like joyful stains
we run after the shadow of the sun.
What word could say this joy?
Now I feel tears.
We can read barefoot, our feet resting
upon the water of the wind.
We read the old epic drawn on the stones.
Far off, the men sing in the field
and their song is seed-become-journey
scattering itself.
The paths were traced in the midst of nourishment,
in the midst of the bed,
in the midst of the home,
and the homes in the same earth
to which one returns.
Song of the Absent One, p. 56