stairs

The heavenly halls are so spacious!
Ascend to them on stairs of air.
Above white clouds the hanging celestial gardens.
A soul tears away from the body and soars.
It remembers that there's up and down.
Have we really lost faith in a second space?
They've dissolved, disappeared, both Heaven and Hell?
Without unearthly meadows how will one meet salvation?
Where will the gathering of the damned find its abode?
Let us weep, lament the enormous loss.
Let us smear our faces with coal, disarrange our hair.
Let us implore, so that it is returned to us,
The second space. - Cz. Milosz