Marc Chagall, Village by Night
Love is alive,
and someone borne along by it is more alive
than lions roaring or men in their fierce courage.
Bandits ambush others on the road.
They get wealth, but they stay in one place.
Lovers keep moving, never the same,
not for a second.
What makes others grieve, they enjoy.
When they look angry, do not believe their faces.
It is like spring lightning, a joke before the rain.
They chew thorns thoughtfully,
along with pasture grass.
Gazelle and lioness have dinner.
Love is invisible, except here, in us.
Sometimes I praise love. Sometimes love praises me.
Love, a little shell somewhere
on the ocean floor, opens its mouth.
You and I and we, those imaginary beings,
enter the shell as a single drop of water.
