Divine Touch

What apparition! Ah, what light!
A white star fell into the garden,

Unexpected, unsought. Luck,
arrow, flower, fire.

In the high grass, in the wide silk,
it fell from the house of time.

A star came back to our world.
My hands bear its scar.

—Translated from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu

(from La cumpana apelor, 1933)