The Grown-Up

All this stood upon her and was the world and stood upon her with all its fear and grace as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless yet wholly image, like the Ark of God, and solemn, as if imposed upon a race. As she endured it all: bore up under the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone, the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn, serenely as a woman carrying water moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play, transfiguring and preparing for the future, the first white veil descended, gliding softly over her opened face, almost opaque there, never to be lifted off again, and somehow giving to all her questions just one answer: In you, who were a child once-in you. Translated by Stephen Mitchell