Original text of poetry by Louise Glück

When the stubborn god

came after me with his gifts

My fear encouraged him

So He ran faster

through the wet grass, as always,

praising me. I see the

capture in praise; despite the sound of his piano,

I pray to the father in the sea

to save me. When

the god arrived, I had disappeared,

changed forever into a tree. Reader,

Pity Apollo: by the water,

I escaped him, I called

my invisible father - because

I grew stiff in the arms of that god,

for his omnipresent love

My father did not

No expression emerges from the water.

Messenger

You just have to wait and they will find you.

The geese flew low across the marsh,

glistening in the black water.

They will find you.

And deer

They are so beautiful

It is as if their bodies do not hinder them.

Slowly they drifted out into the open

Through the slender auburn photos of the sun.

Why are they willing to stand so quietly

If they are not waiting?

Almost motionless, until their cages rot,

The shrubs tremble in the wind,

Bowden without leaves.

You just have to let it happen:

Let the cry go, let go like the moon

Twisting out of the earth and rising

The circle that fills its arrows

Until they come before you

Like dead things burdened with flesh,

and you are above them, wounded But superior.