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At a certain
distance I follow behind you, ashamed to come closer.
Though you have chosen me as a worker in your vineyard and I pressed the
grapes of your wrath.
To every one according to his nature: what is crippled should not always
be healed.
I do not even know whether one can be free, for I have toiled against my
will.
Taken by the neck like a boy who kicks and bites
Till they sit him at the desk and order him to make letters,
I wanted to be like others but was given the bitterness of separation,
Believed I would be an equal among equals but woke up a stranger.
Looking at manners as if I arrived from a different time.
Guilty of apostasy from the communal rite.
There are so many who are good and just, those were rightly chosen
And wherever you walk the earth, they accompany you.
Perhaps it is true that I loved you secretly
But without strong hope to be close to you as they are.
Berkeley, 1980
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Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass
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