My green family

When did I part from my sisters, trees,
when did my green family
push me away from their circle.

Like a rolling stone,
like a grain of sand rubbing at the heels of life
I roam through highways and by-ways.

I would talk to people,
but the words are intractable,
intractable words,
that make their nests in men's ears,
that make people, hearing them, say:
Such talk is our mother tongue.

Yet my hands, my shoulders
are weary of the weight.
Words sit on them like birds,
migratory birds,
flying the spring
from hand to hand, from shoulder to shoulder.

Like a rolling stone:
so my cry begins--
but in the middle, at the moment of the deepest sighs,
the blood of my green family rises within me.
My feet split,
my arms stretch out
upwards, stiffly:
a spruce shoots grows arises through me,
a tree top sings and hums:
a nesting tree, a nesting tree--a rest for birds--
bringing spring, spring--
But when did I part from my sisters, trees,
when did my green family
push me away from their circle.
I pat   I cuddle
the brown knees of my sisters,
I stroke the shining resin hair,
when they hugging embracing
sing and sway.
They never look my way,
they don't remember me,
my family has weaned me from them.
But I lean my back along their trunks,
set my feet like they set roots in the ground,
Lift my hand as they lift branches
and I go on joining others on the way.
Not like a nesting tree, not like a watchtower--
I do not split the gales.
Only the climb   the track   the length of the back,
only the breathing of the tree tops
until the journey ends,
when the path closes,
when with a thousand hands my green family reclaims me,
with a thousand blankets muffles me
when I sleep below the song of the spruce
in my family bed.