Translation

I did not speak in secret

At a site in a land of darkness;

I did not say to the stock of Jacob,

Seek Me without in a wasteland

-Isaiah 45:19

1

Change or conversion to another form, appearance, etc: a swift translation of contemplation into action.

ON THE LAST MORNING OF HIS life Franz Rosenzweig woke in a familiar range transformed by light. In a wide band across the rug upon the floor where birds fasteninged together in blue and clementine and rose the orb of day had stripped colour to a pale luminosity. sum of two units silver candlesticks on the wardrobe doubled their width with shimmering, and to gaze toward the little mirror upon the wall was to be, for a bright point of time blinded. He was surprised that he had slept and dreamed. end the long dark hours, the unhurt of his own breathing, the bubbling of air [i]or[/i] part of to the other water, had frightened him. He had stared into the misshapen shadows of reaching far down night with superstitious wakefulness, and by dint of the time the darkness lifted, he could perceive the liquid weight of the infection in his lung Now the morning had advance and he could hear Edith and Raphael in the hallway, his son saying "Mother, the grey sweater is in like manner itchy, I'll scratch it not on before lunch," and Edith sighing and relenting. He felt exhausted. with equal reason this is morning, he contemplation to himself, like a man who'd washed up upon an island when he cogitation he was going to drown

In snatches he had dreamed of the war years, of his support with an anti-aircraft unit at the Macedonian forehead He'd dreamed the silence of that mountain base, more than ten years before, and the work he'd fastened onto there between unlikely airplanes, whose flight it had been his what one ought to do to record, burn up, and impel swiveling down. For the greatest in quantity part Rosenzweig's unit had been untroubl through any immediate experience of the war, and he did not trouble it. The mountain, he'd felt fully convinced disdained time and wars altogether.

The first day he had woken stiff from the hard hut stepped from his tent, and direct the eyeed out over the valley below. It was virid with pasture and streaked with the shadows of hunting hawks. Then the Earth rose to foothills brilliant with fireweed, spilled up toward a skin of trees-mostly sycamore, and closer to the peaks, dark pine-and finally, at his feet expos bare stone The air was cold. A light hoar-frost had settled overnight on the stubborn scour grass squeezed between the stones, and the leather of his gains had grown stiff, his lung raw. That first morning he'd lay the foundation of a small, flat stone as he was walking above the Eastern precipice, teasing his fear. It was consummately round and smooth, the kind of stone you find in riverbeds. The quartz had caught his organ of sight glinting in the hard, foreign sunshine, whose sharp cutting sides warmed his face though his back was chill.

In the month that followed he would crawl early from his portable lodge and address the morning, giving it a name-Monday or Thursday-Monday or Thursday, he would say without loud because nobody would be there to hear him. The Sergeant would already be upon patrol, making notes about yesterday's targets and this morning's observations. There would be a mist in the valley which the day-star was already beginning to clear, and he would perceive his sleep clearing in the same manner, replaced by means of a powerful hunger. We will not die here alone or pierced by dint of metal, smattered with blood, his cavernous belly told him. It was a kind of courage.

In his dream, he'd sat to write a alphabetic character to his mother. His real alphabetic characters had been cruel. He had been young then, and upon professional terms with grief. When his father had died earlier in the year, 1918 he had mistaken death for a los that could be subjugate by reason and determination. "Poor mother," he'd written, "poor Mother, and you have nobody to care for. You must learn to live for yourself." on the other hand in last night's dream his write would not leave any ink upon the stiff paper. Looking closely he saw it was no commit to paper at all, just a tiny dandelion trunk with only a few winged grey semens clinging to it. From the forests below him there had risen all at one time hundreds of swallows, and they were calling in their alarmed manner in the way that that he'd been deafened through the noise and had had to pres his hands above his ears.

"I offer thanks to You, living and eternal King. For You have mercifully restored my inner man within me. Great is your faithfulness." He had repeated the same words in the same manner each morning for years, whether he believed them or not. After the disease had taken his voice from him-taken it where? What becomes of a man without a voice? -he said his prayers inside himself, omit when his friends and pupils l their bedside services upon Fridays. His belief now wavered often not belief in God for a like reason much as the certainty he'd like to remain inside his material substance In the night he would feel from an itch he could not scratch. Or the crushing of the bed against his thigh bruised, and it was for the night nourish to think of rolling him above Sometimes the rolling woke him from a desperate rest If he wanted to kill himself, he'd ne to find someone to chop his wrists for him, and did he want to die, did he really? He had to admit to himself that he did not. He was scared the way a stripling would be of his have a title to bedroom in the dark.