1. I wore out generations of people
And after more generations, more generations

2. Three generations of my family I wore out
And it was God who was most disconsolate

3. And I lived two lives - death
Meets sustenance in them miserably

4. So I encounter its delusions sometimes
And sometimes its piercing misery

5. I was raised a lad enduring wars
And those who endure me find in me a spearhead

6. And red horses whose wounds drip blood
Like lions rending with rending

7. I saw them not hoping for life
Until they were led in leather halters

8. And horses matching the armored men
Like dogs lapping the muddy water

9. So when we approached the neighing of battle
And could not see the living except groping

10. The fire lit up for us a face that was exciting
Confused in the heart’s confusion

11. Lighting like the light of the flaming torch
God did not put any bronze in it

12. With a companion other than the intimacy of the gaze
That mixes with it piercing misery

13. When the sleeping one folds his cheek
She folds over him and becomes a garment

14. With a bending that makes necks incline
As the dressmaker tailored the garment

15. I preceded to a place of descent, fertile
Like threshers furrowing the chaff

16. And a grueling war wherein there was a striker
I stabbed with my spear and it was piercing

17. Before the standard like the shadow of the eagle
Whoever comes to it meets a penetrating stab

18. So in the morning he became among the people
Like the Samaritan when Moses said “Do not touch”