My hands want to embrace every tree,

My hands want to embrace every tree,

my lips want to fall upon every blade of grass,

my head wants to lay itself down on every stone,

from the depths of my body my longing stretches toward you,

earth,

stretches like a root to dig itself into you,

earth,

to release clamps, and nails, and veins into you,

earth,

before you I can be open, earth,

not be ashamed before you, forest,

to say:

I am thirsty.

I am hungry.

I am bad.

I am lustful.

My lips, my closed ones,

tear themselves apart, like a tiger's;

and with teeth and with nails

I throw myself upon God, upon my Creator,

and I pierce him through his heart.

Behind me — forty years.

What has not already happened in these forty years!

To recount —

To you it's all the same, forest,

to my Creator, God, it's also all the same.

Unless for the sake of my little boy, for the sake of mine —

unless to go and wake him from his sleep,

and say to him —

what to say to him?

Whip—poor—will.

What does that mean! It means: I am calm again. I am still.

Still good, that a tomorrow exists. And in the lap of tomorrow

lie ready new deeds, and treasures of fresh words,

and smiles and glances to be able to make good, to change,

and to bring joy and faithfulness and love and comfort,

and to smooth out wrinkles, and refresh angry lips.

Still good, that a tomorrow exists. Because — what if suddenly,

I give myself a crack and a fall to the earth, and begin dying

in the forest, and alone, and there's no one to hear

my last prayer, my last call... and little boy sleeps,

and wife is in the house, and they know nothing — nothing.

And forest encloses me,

and night covers me. And lost. And everything remains as before.

— A piece of paper and a pencil! Trees, to you my prayer,

spread your branches, spread your cries, transmit my own outcry:

a piece of paper and a pencil. —

Silent and hidden the forest.

Whip—poor—will. —

What does it mean? It means: I'm once again not calm, not still.

Here comes toward me life of truth and of dream.

I stretch out my hands to greet all the figures

who come to hear a word from me, or to gladden me with a word.

Here come toward me the poor heroes of the drama "Shop,"

which I'm just now inventing, constructing.

Here they come into the shop in a gray and early dawn.

Here they punch their cards on the clock.

Here already the machines dance.

Here they jump up with their backs, with their pointed backs.

Operators and cutters, pressers and finishers,

and here is a boss, thin, tall, cold,

a strict businessman, with eyes that tame, that rule;

and here is a contractor,

who turns in the wreck of a sick conscience.

And here is a girl, withered, an old operator.

Here she comes — here follow her like hunchbacked geese, like limping,

torn, ripped years without happiness and without love,

scattered pieces of weeping — broken needles.

I see how her life goes through like a cut, like a red one,

through all the characters and actions. Oh, how I want

to fathom the poorest sorrow and poorest life.

And reveal suns —

and this is the light that rises over everyone, everyone,

through death and betrayal, through love, through sacrifice — —