A few lines from Thomas Bernard

Some years ago I translated Thomas Bernhard's poem Unter dem Eisen des Mondes on Poet-in-Residence.

Here are some of the lines:

  we mow and bleat and know nothing of winter,
  we drink our cider and know nothing,
  and soon we'll be forgotten
  and the verses decayed like snow before the house

  . . . 

  we sleep while our dirty shoes 
  moulder before the door of the house. 

  . . . 

  The year is like the year a thousand years ago, 
  we know nothing,
  we know nothing of the end,
  of the sunken towns, of the flood in which the horses
  and people were drowned. 

Owed to joy?