Gave me a tongue to utter all my pain.
What's to be hoped from seeing her
again?
Hoped from the still-shut blossoms
of today?
Which opens, heaven or hell, around
me?
When I guess, my thoughts go
wandering every way.
But steady – there! She's there, at
heaven's door:
Her arms enfold and raise me, as
before.
So then the heavens are open, take
me in
As if deserving life forever blest.
No wish, no longing, and no
might-have-been
Stinted: the very goal of all my quest.
Eyes well delighted on that
loveliest thing,
Their tears subsiding at the
passionate spring.
Didn't the day go by on flashing
feathers!
Didn't it send the minutes skimming
there!
Our sign, the kiss at evening – and
what weathers
It promised: fair tonight, tomorrow
fair.
Hours were like sisters, lingering
as they passed,
Each face alike, each different from
the last.
Our final kiss, so shuddering sweet,
it tore
The sheerest of all fiber, heart's
desire.
My foot, abrupt or dragging, dodged
her door
As if an angel waved that sword of
fire.
Eyes frozen on the dusky ruts go
glum.
Turn, and her door's a darkness,
shut and dumb.
My soul's a darkness, shut and dumb
– as though
This heart had never opened, never
found
Hours of delight beside her, such a
glow
As all the stars of heaven let dance
around.
Now gloom, remorse, self-mockery – clouds
of care
Clutch at it, sluggish, in the
sluggish air.
What of the world – it' s done for?
Cliffs of granite
Crowned shadowy with the sacred
grove – they're vapor?
No harvest-moon? Green delta country
(can it?)
Turn with its trees to ash, like
burning paper?
That grandeur curved above us – all
undone? –
Now
with its thousand clouds, and now with none.
A form there! – rare and airy, silken,
bright,
Floats forth, among the clouds in
grave ballet,
An angel in blue noon, or –? No, a
white
Slim body – hers! – inclining far
away.
You saw her lean so at the gala
ball;
Among the loveliest, lovelier far
than all.
A
ruse for moments only. Don't suppose
The
empty air a match for her embraces.
Back to your heart of hearts, that
better knows
Her and the changing miracle her
face is.
In every guise she's greater. Like a
flame,
Forever varying and the very same.
Once by the gate she waited; in she
brought me;
Onward from joy to keener joy we
passed.
The last last kiss-but how she ran
and caught me,
Pressed to my mouth an even laster
last.
Still that indelible image of desire
Burns on my heart in script of
living fire –
My heart (its battlement a height
securing
Her for itself alone, itself for
her)
Only for her is happy in enduring;
Knows it has life by stirring if she
stir.
Confined in love, is free and on its
own;
Praising, with each pulsation, her
alone,
Because: when dead to love, and
hardly caring
Whether another's love could sink or
save it
–
She came. And
my old verve in dreaming, daring,
Resolving, up-and-doing – this she
gave it.
If ever love restored a human soul,
It took my shrunken self and made it
whole.
And all through her! In mind and
body's gloom
I mooned lugubrious, lurching and
agrope.
Look where I would, saw shuddering
visions loom
Over the heart's eroded acres. Hope
– Suddenly, out of hopelessness –
was there:
A girl with the light of morning on
her hair.
To
God's own peace, the peace that here below
Passeth
all understanding (so the preacher)
I'm
minded to compare that heady glow
Of fervor, being near a certain
creature.
The heart's at ease; not one
distraction blurs
That deepest sense, the sense of wholly
hers.
In the pure ocean of the soul, a
comber
Flings itself, out of thankfulness,
self-giving,
Toward something Purer, Higher-Grand
Misnomer
However named – to approach the
ever-living.
We call it, being reverent. And
its flight
Sweeps me, when I'm beside her,
height to height.
Before her gaze, like sun where
winter lingers,
Before her breathing, like the stir
of May,
Self-love, that steely ice that digs
its fingers
Deep in our rigid psyche, melts
away.
No self-concern, no self-importance
where
She sets a foot. They squirm away,
that pair.
As if I heard her, urgent: “Hour by
hour
Life gives itself, exuberant,
unbidden.
Yesterday's meaning is a withered
flower;
Tomorrow! – who can live there?
Where's it hidden?
Today though – if I quailed with
sunset near
Never a sun but showed me something
dear.
"Then do as I do: Look with
knowing pride
Each moment in the face. But no
evasion!
Keep every nerve a-tingle! Open-eyed
Rush to it all: day's effort, love's
elation
But where you are, be wholly. Be a
child.
You're all then.
Undefeatable," she smiled.
Easy, I thought, for you to say!
Some grace
Shows you forever as the moment's
friend.
Anyone near you for a moment's space
Is fortune's favorite-till the
moment end.
As end it does! In panic I depart:
You and your pretty wisdom break the
heart!
Now miles and miles between us.
If I could, How should I live this
minute? Who's to say?
It offers much desirable and good
–
All like a
shabby pack to shrug away.
Invincible longing dogs me as I go.
Tears
are the one philosophy I know.
So let them have their way now,
unrepressed.
No chance they'll damp the furnaces
within.
Embattled there, all's berserk in my
breast
With life and death locked grisly.
Which to win?
Herbs dull our suffering when the
body's ill,
But if the soul lack nerve, lack
even will –?
Or worse, lack understanding? Years
without her!
Whose image haunts me in a thousand
ways.
Sun on her hair, the falling dusk
about her –
The memories lag, or dwindle off in
haze.
What good's all this? What comfort?
shaken so
By all this coming, going, ebb and
flow?
•
Well, leave me, good companions to
endure it
Here on the moor alone, with rocks
and moss.
But you, the world's before you. On.
Explore it,
The whole wide earth, the heaven so
broad across!
Make your investigations, scour and
scout.
Nature has clues to shuffle and sort
out.
I've
lost it all, earth, heaven, self. Ignore a
Man
the gods coddled with a "lucky star"!
They put me to the proof with that
Pandora
So rich in gifts, in havoc richer
far.
They pressed me to sweet lips that
gave and gave;
Then crushed and flung me headlong.
Toward the grave.
Translated
by John Frederick Nims