The real world nearby here I love the best
Is green and growing southern countryside;
With farmland to the east and to the west,
Around the many rivers, long and wide

But forests are our main type of terrain –
And deer, I think, as plentiful as flies:
The real world sits outside my window pane,
I stop to take it in. And in surprise,

I notice many things I’ve never seen.
The sky’s still blue right now, the lawn is green;
The leaves are strewn across the lawn and fence,
This yard, this house, my world – and not immense –

The real me isn’t models, isn’t fairs;
It isn’t august majesty, or fame.
The real me sits and thinks — at times, despairs —
That when I leave, this world will be the same

As it was on the day that I arrived.
That when they finally spread my funeral pall
My fleeting hopes and visions, so short-lived,
Will have made no small difference
At all