Number 15

My life is gone and only half a soul remains; I am the straggler left behind by a caravan. On the path through the meadow a faint trace remains; a nest of thorns is all that is left. The nightingale is about to spread its wings, but neither a flower nor a garden remains. Like those left behind, my eyes still gaze with longing after the vanished caravan. Of all those birds with their golden nests, one lone bird is left in the empty nest. The grief of the departed is branded on my heart; a fire from that caravan still smolders in me. My body has worn thin like the new moon, yet my forehead still rests upon a threshold. See my weakness: like the candle at dawn, only half a life is left in me. Long ago, doctor, my boat was lost; it drifts still on a boundless sea.