1.

Of course I have arrived here just too late.
Oh, well, I have nothing better to do than wait.

No sense in haring off hoping to find another way;
Surely a door that opened once will open again one day.

Anyhow the land all about here is much to my taste:
Abandoned, overgrown, waste.

2.

Not even Madame Sosostris could have foreseen
Despite her wicked cards and her eyes that were Gypsy green

From the butterfly’s chaotic flutter
What hurricanes might utter.

3.

I offer a modest voice, speaking
An old language, having lived
Not quite long enough to have attained wisdom,
A bit too long to maintain a plausible ignorance.

What I recollect in this my time of tranquility
Is the weeping that took me over, years of it, years earlier.
What I remember now are the waves that heaved
Me up out of the sea that was my past.

In this my time of tranquility
Which will also pass
There is little more to be said
Once so much has been said.

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