TO SLEEP

The night's baptism of the deep,
you, in whose rivers
the spirit thinks it strokes against
the sea that is called death -
it is life's sea he touches,
life's to-be-feared
beyond...

Pour your trance's riddle!
Slowly I step out
into the subterranean
misty water
that which unseen washes
the roots of our daily lives,
that which carries
of foam of our daily lives -
that from whose darkness
raised itself, woken,
too deep for what thought knows,
the body's fine, venerable,
immense, immense magnificence.
Pour your trance's riddle,
wash from my spirit
the past day's faded
dust and residue!
Death, who give life,
let me plunge again
into the light, life-renewed!

For more information, please visit the website of David McDuff and his own pages with the translations.