Skylab

Translated by Roger Greenwald

We’ve come so far, thought the astronaut

as he swam around the capsule in his third week

and by accident kicked a god in the eye

–so far

that there’s no difference anymore between up and down,

north and south, heavy and light.

And how, then, can we know righteousness.

So far.

And weightless, in a sealed room

we chase the sunrises at high speed

and sicken with longing for a green stalk

or the heft of something in our hands. Lifting a stone.

One night he saw that the Earth was like an open eye

that looked at him as gravely as the eye of a child

awakened in the middle of the night.