To the river

O river - hourglass of water figure of eternity
I step in your stream more and more changed
so thath I might be a cloud a fish or stone cliff
and you are changeless like a clock measuring
the body's metamorphoses and the spirit's fall
the gradual disintegration of tissues and love

I born of clay
want to be your pupil
to know the heart of Olympian string
cool procession murmuring column
bedrock of my faith and my despair

teach me stuborness and endurance
so that I shall deserve in the last hour
to repose in the shade of a great delta
in a holy triangle of beginning and end

Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems 1956 - 1998, Alissa Valles, Ecco, 2007