To go along dying and singing. And to baptize shadow

with the Babylonian blood of a noble gladiator.

And to initial the gold carpet’s cuneiforms

with a nightingale quill and the blue ink of sorrow.

Life? A protean female. To contemplate her alarmed

escaping in her veils, a heathen, deceitful Judith;

to see her from the wound, and to seize her with a look,

inlaying a ruby with a wax caprice.

The must of Babylon, a Holofernes without troops,

I hung my nest in the Christian tree;

the redeeming vineyard denied love to my cups;

Judith, perfidious life, slanted her sacrificial body.

What a pagan feast. And to love her unto death,

while my veins sow the red pearls of wickedness;

in this way to return to dust, a luckless conquistador,

leaving thousands of eyes of blood on the dagger.