Alder Catkin

Whenever the wind drops an alder catkin into my palm, or a cuckoo calls merrily, with trains screaming by, I fall to reflecting, and struggle to grasp life’s meaning, and, as usual, arrive at the place where it slips from my grasp. Reducing oneself to a speck of dust in a starry nebula is an old way out, but wiser than trumped-up grandeur, and it’s no degradation to realize one’s own insignificance, for in it we realize sadly the implicit grandeur of life. Alder catkin, weightless as down, only blow it away and all changes utterly, and life, it appears, is not such a trifling matter, when nothing about it seems merely a trifle. Alder catkin, loftier than any prophecy! The person who silently pulls it to pieces is changed. So what, if we can’t change the world in a flash, as we’d like- when we change, the world changes too! We’re then transported into a kind of new quality as we sail into the distance to a new unknown land, and we don’t even notice the rocking’s strange rhythm on new waters, and a completely different ship. When there suddenly wakes the starless feeling of being a castaway from those shores where you greeted the dawn with such hope, my dear companion, there’s no need, take it from me, to despair- Trust in the unknown alarmingly black anchorage! What often alarms from afar seems hardly perturbing in close-up. There too are eyes, voices, the minute glow of cigarettes. But as you grow used to it, the creak of what seems like a haven will murmur to you that no single haven exists. Translucent the soul that can’t be embittered by change! Forgive the friends who’ve misunderstood or even betrayed you. Forgive, understand, even if your lover stops loving you! Set her free from your palm like an alder catkin. And don’t trust a new haven that starts to enfold you; your vocation is the havenless far-off distance. Break away from the morning if you become moored by habit, and cast off again and set sail for a different sorrow. Let people say: 'Really, when will he get some sense! ' Don’t worry! You can’t please them all at one time. What base common sense: 'It’ll all blow over, it’ll all come right in the end...' When it all comes right in the end, there’s no point in living. And what can’t be explained is in no way nonsensical. All reassessments should not worry one in the least- since the value of life won’t be lowered or raised: the worth of what’s beyond value isn’t subject to change. ...Why am I saying all this? Because one stupid chatterbox of a cuckoo predicts a long life for me. Why am I saying all this? Because an alder catkin lies in my palm, and quivers, as if living.. 1975 Translated by Arthur Boyars and Simon Franklin