- Year after year, the bull
pulled the plough through the earth. The soil was
neither stony like barren desert nor soft like a
marshland meadow in spring. Whereas he had often shaken
his irately head in his wanton youth, he had now learned
and forgotten at the same time:
Work was neither difficult nor easy for him, he did it.
When he rested from his work, he grazed on meadows that
fed him for a while. When he was tired, he slept for a
while. When he awoke, he took his yoke. He did not count
the steps he took or the meadows in the twilight. So he
could do again and again what he had accepted after his
kind.
After a while he forgot summer and winter, day and
night, as if there were only time.
Only when he slept did he sometimes see his companion in
the sky in a dream between the treetops of the east, who
had sometimes parched the ground for him to work hard,
sometimes made the meadow lush and nourishing with her
rays.
And through her he became what he was: the bull!
|