All that it meets; with swift desire,
Flashes and is covered once again.
And who can such phenomena explain?
And who has eyes to peer into the dark?
Why try? They disappear without a mark.
Harrowing my entrails, bittersweet,
My journey’s end, at which extremity
The soul’s condemned to wander and to meet
Its kindred spirits; and where to be free.
But who has loved me, who my plaintive voice
Has heard and understood – and felt my joys?
I see that love, for me, is like a taint,
Which, from the weaker, could not bear restraint.
Many lovers do not trust the world
And so are happy; others feel desire
Engendered in their blood and outwards swirled
In brain disorder or creative fire.
Love, of all the passions, most divine;
Yet, a thing I never could define!
Seems a love can take but one sure course:
At fever pitch with all my psychic force!
But I could not be weaned from such deceptions;
My unimpassioned heart would throb in vain.
To its beat, amongst the lacerations,
Pipes there still love’s long-revered refrain;
As from dreary ruins springs a birch –
Youthful, spry, beguiling from her perch –
Like a ray of hope, she greens the rones
And titivates the melancholy stones.
And, for her fate, the nameless interloper
Mourns. Poor defenceless devotee!
Under sultry blasts and lack of hope
She wilts and withers, my tenacious tree;
But, from her spot, she will not be effaced
As whirlwinds surge, she’s sturdy at its base;
For, only in a broken heart, desire
Can burn with potent, everlasting fire.
The proud soul does not tire or yield to gloom
But bears its heavy load with resignation;
To its fate it will not yet succumb,
But still persists; in breath, its vindication.
Dueling with the Absolute, it fails;
But, may, in losing, and by such travails,
Inspire a thousand vassals to rebel.
Such a soul’s in heaven – or in hell.
I have always loved the empty places
Where the wind caresses naked hills,
Where the kite, ascending airy spaces,
Essence of the speckled steppe distils.
Here the skittish herd no yoke constrains,