Impatient for the daylight,

We're on our knees,

Exhausted with waiting.

It's then, in that silence,

We hear the woods' strange call.

Meanwhile, we sing from the Indus,

Which comes from far away, and

From the Alpheus, since we've

Long desired decorum.

It's not without dramatic flourish

That one grasps

Straight ahead

What is closest

To reach the other side.

But here we want to build.

Rivers make the land fertile

And allow the foliage to grow.

And if in the summer

Animals gather at a watering place

People will go there, too.

This river is called the Ister.

It lives in beauty. Columns of leaves burn

And stir. They stand in the forest

Supporting each other; above,

A second dimension juts out

From a dome of stones. So I'm

Not surprised that the distantly gleaming river

Made Hercules its guest,

When in search of shadows

He came down from Olympus

And up from the heat of Isthmus.

They were full of courage there,

Which always comes in handy, like cool water

And a path for the spirit to follow.

That's why the hero preferred

To come to the water's source, its fragrant yellow banks

Black with fir trees, in whose depths

The hunter likes to roam

At noon and the resinous trees

Moan as they grow.

Yet the river almost seems

To flow backwards, and I

Think it must come

From the East.

Much could

Be said further. But why does

It hang so straight from the mountain? That other river,

The Rhine, has gone away

Sideways. Not for nothing rivers

Flow in dryness. But how? We need a sign,

Nothing more, something plain and simple,

To remind us of sun and moon, so inseparable,

Which go away — day and night also —

And warm each other in heaven.

They give joy to the highest god. For how

Can he descend to them? And like earth's ancient greenness

They are the children of heaven. But he seems

Too indulgent to me, not freer,

And almost scornful. For when

Day begins in youth,

Where it commences growing,

Another is already there

To further enhance the beauty, and chafes

At the bit like foals. And if he is happy

Distant breezes hear the commotion;

But the rock needs engraving

And the earth needs its furrows;

If not, an endless desolation;

But what a river will do,

Nobody knows.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5531747&forum_id=2#47685273)