The birches are mad with green points 
the wood's edge is burning with their green, 
burning, seething--No, no, no. 
The birches are opening their leaves one 
by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold 
and separate, one by one. Slender tassels 
hang swaying from the delicate branch tips-- 
Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word. 
Black is split at once into flowers. In 
every bog and ditch, flares of 
small fire, white flowers!--Agh, 
the birches are mad, mad with their green. 
The world is gone, torn into shreds 
with this blessing. What have I left undone 
that I should have undertaken? 

O my brother, you redfaced, living man 
ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon 
this same dirt that I touch--and eat. 
We are alone in this terror, alone, 
face to face on this road, you and I, 
wrapped by this flame! 
Let the polished plows stay idle, 
their gloss already on the black soil. 
But that face of yours--! 
Answer me. I will clutch you. I 
will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face 
into your face and force you to see me. 
Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest 
thing that is in your mind to say, 
say anything. I will understand you--! 
It is the madness of the birch leaves opening 
cold, one by one. 

My rooms will receive me. But my rooms 
are no longer sweet spaces where comfort 
is ready to wait on me with its crumbs. 
A darkness has brushed them. The mass 
of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken. 
Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed. 
I am shaken, broken against a might 
that splits comfort, blows apart 
my careful partitions, crushes my house 
and leaves me--with shrinking heart 
and startled, empty eyes--peering out 
into a cold world. 

In the spring I would be drunk! In the spring 
I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things. 
Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei! 
your hands, your lips to drink! 
Give me your wrists to drink-- 
I drag you, I am drowned in you, you 
overwhelm me! Drink! 
Save me! The shad bush is in the edge 
of the clearing. The yards in a fury 
of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror. 
Drink and lie forgetting the world. 

And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one. 
Coldly I observe them and wait for the end. 
And it ends.