I Have Seen Nothing

I do enjoy butterflies, forests, flowers, brooks – flying in the sky like white mists, I do enjoy grass – an endless miracle: all are so wondrous even because they’re visible! But is not there also the invisible kingdom? – The roots of a brook entrusted to the earth’s dampness, seeds of flowers, the converse side of grass and forest hidden in soil: All which are left facing graves only, What do they look at, what do they enjoy, what, after all, there happens beyond this earth as they, all these blessed ones, do emerge, so beautiful and motley, out from it? Would you consider that their beauty shines out with no bliss? Is not a man this way, too, radiating what his soul contains? I have slid apart, so many a time, that black soil, and looked inside… Alas, the wretched, I have seen nothing.