This poem was published in some campus literary mag back in the 80's. I think its brilliant... just bloody brilliant. I cut it out of the mag, and I've been retyping it again and again, ever since. I've hyperlinked it as a sort of project for myself. Apologies to Christoph Meckel and Carol Bedwell, if I've typo'ed- or hyperlinked-away their genius. And, of course, I've no rights to any of this, and if the copyright owner wants it down, they just need to let me know.

MY WORK

My work consists in this:
Converting rats and fleas to snow,
Melting great icebergs down
And forging durable houses out of dew.

Day grants me little laughter in this work,
Drying up oceans to obtain their salt.
Night grants me little sleep, but days and nights
Offer me grounds for thought and not complaint.

No angel, but a raven in his place,
Stands at my back to recompense my work;
Buffeting me with chilly sighing wings,
Blinding my expectations with wild caws.

I am my shadow’s own companion here,
Watching the great chameleon in the dark;
There are no servants sleeping by my door,
And no whale surges past my windowpane.

I speak the tongue of gold diggers in swamps
Which changes snow to rust, the rust to snow,
The language of lost silence, devising pain,
Refrain of all my past and future days.

Neither in darkness nor in light I stand.
Twilight remains for my strange business.
Four walls on earth remain, and Heaven has
sparse weekend stars in its obscurity.

Christoph Meckel
(translated by Carol Bedwell)

retyped many times (probably with typos), and hyperlinks added by the Fishmonger