VIII

The amorous shepherd has lost his staff,

And his sheep are straying on the hillside,

And he didn’t even play the flute he brought to play because he was thinking so much.

No one came to him or went away. He never found his staff again.

The others cursed at him and herded his sheep for him.

No one had loved him, in the end.

When he got up from the hillside and the false truth, he saw everything:

The great valleys full of the same green as always,

The great distant mountains, more real than any feeling,

All reality, with the sky and the air and the fields, is present.

Once again the air he’d missed for so long entered coolly into his lungs

And it felt like the air was opening sad freedom in his chest again.