Everywhere my eye falls I see gray gray earth
Bleak and sorrowful and fruitless and dull
How cold is this land, how lonely, how empty
Sounds are muffled and heart is afraid of the cold light
I wonder what all those others felt when they passed this spot
Did they cringe with this fear? Did they weep with this joy?
Millions of others before me, did they stumble on this same stone?
Did the Fate play these jokes on those who preceded me here?
Were they thrown into a sunny summer meadow and then
Back to a snowstorm in a lonely bleak city
And back to the warmth and sweet air, helpless observers
Thousands of thousands before me on this very turn of the path
Slight and slightly menacing, and promising years and aeons
Of dull throbbing pain where their soul used to be
Thousands of thousands of my poor and happy brothers
Did they repose at this very place before finding the strength
To go farther still? What did they find there?
What will I find there? Same gray ashes, or madness, or freedom?
I met some of them on their way back, laughing, or crying,
Or quietly pondering something they would not bother to tell
No use asking them — you'd be better off asking trees
Or low-hanging sun, or moon, feeding the haze with its glow
At this very spot which so many have passed before me
And many more still had never managed to reach