Balance

Collecting Apples, 1918, by Leonid Pasternak
(click on painting to enlarge)

Oh trees of life, when is your wintertime?
We are not in balance. Not in agreement
as migrating birds are. Late and overtaken,
we hurriedly try to catch the wind
and fall into a random swamp.
To bloom and to wilt is all the same to us.
Somewhere lions still walk the earth.
As long as their majesty endures, so does their power.

From the Fourth Duino Elegy