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It is not easy to create emptiness.

What should you tip it into? A deserted square,

Possibly by moonlight? Time is the perspective

Lending it a depth. Here, in an abstracted way,

Melancholy toys with metaphysics.

Emptiness recalls all the lost entirety which can just be

Filled with things, things raining down on one,

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In Leonardo’s case. In Durer’s, plethora of aids

Helping the muse to ponder as to what the end may be

To pondering that emptiness within. A road which simply

Ends at a river’s bank. Here one waits, immobile,

For the non-existent ferry, which, being out of the frame

Cannot be said to exist. When we saw the deer,

Having got lost enough to do so, did I not also hear her

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Who I scattered there? Long indeed have I lain dead

In such an earth as can rightly be said to perish

That a new earth may rise from the depths, were its waters

Not simply bottomless. By cold rains have I been beaten,

And by many dews made wet. Snow has covered me

In its drifts, and yet I am not emptied of regret.

Emptiness waits for the ferry, here by a river to be crossed:

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