1.
O two-tongued angel, on my grief a hundred
proof no less I should have got you drunk.
But I’m not one, whatever pain the lies encouraged
from the start, to claim a tooth for a tooth.
And now the clever, festering doom!
Oh, no, betraying angel, it’s not fatal,
not this suffering, this rash of the heart.
But why at parting shower me with such a rain
of blows to the body? Why this pointless
hurricane of kisses? Why, your mockery
supreme, kill me in everybody’s sight?
2.
O shame, how overwhelming you can be!
Yet at this breaking-up how many dreams persist.
Were I no more than a jumbled heap
of brows and eyes and lips, cheeks, shoulders, wrists,
for my grief so strong, forever young,
at the order of my verse, its ruthless march,
I wrould submit to those and, leading them
in battle, storm your citadel, O monstrous shame.
3.
All my thoughts I now distract from you,
if not at parties, drinking wine, then in heaven!
Surely one day. as the landlord’s next door bell
is ringing, for someone that door will open.
I’ll rush in on them in tinkling December, say,
the door pushed wide—and here I am, far as the hall!
“Where’ve you come from? What’s being said?
Tell us the news, the latest scandal from the city.”
Is all my grief mistaken?
Will it mutter later, “She mirrored her exactly,”
as, gathering myself for a leap past forty feet,
I burst out crying, “Is it really you?”
And the public squares, will they spare me?
Ah, if you could only know what pain I feel
when, at least a hundred times a day, the streets,
amazed, confront me with their counterfeits of you.
4.
Go ahead, try to stop me, try to put out
this fiery fit of sorrow, soaring
like mercury in a barometer.
Stop me from raving about you. Don’t be ashamed,
we are alone. Turn out the lights, turn them
out, and douse my fire with fire.
5.
Like combers twine this cloudburst of cold elbows,
like lilies, silken-stalwart, helpless palms.
Sound the triumph! Break loose! Set to! In this wild race
the woods are roaring, choked on the echo of Calydonian hunts,
where Acteon pursued Atalanta like a doe to the clearing,
where in endless azure, hissing past the horses’ ears,
they kissed and kissed to the uproarious baying of the chase,
caressed among the shrillest horns and crackling trees,
the clattering hoofs and claws.
Like those break loose, break loose, rush into the woods!
6.
So you’re disappointed? You think we should
part with a swan song for requiem,
with a show of sorrow, tears showering
from your eyes dilated, trying their victorious power?
As if during mass the frescoes, shaken by what’s playing
on Johann Sebastian’s lips, were to tumble from the arches!
From this night on in everything my hatred discovers
a dragging on and on that ought to have a whip.
In the dark, instantly, without a thought
my hatred decides that it is time
to plough it all up. that suicide’s folly
slow, too slow, the speed of a snail.
7.
My love, my angel, just as in that night
flying from Bergen to the Pole, the wild geese
swooping, a snowstorm of warmest down, I swear,
O Sweet, my will’s not crossed when I urge you.
Dearest, please forget and go to sleep.
When like a Norwegian whaler’s wreck, to its stock ice-jammed,
a winter s apparition, rigid past its masts, I soar,
fluttered in your eyes’ aurora borealis, sleep, don’t cry:
all before your wedding day will heal, my dear.
When like the North itself beyond the outmost settlements,
hidden from the arctic and its ice floe wide awake,
rinsing the eyes of blinded seals with midnight’s rim,
I say—don’t rub your eyes, sleep, forget—it’s all nonsense.
8.
My table’s not so wide that, pressing my chest
against its board, I cannot crook my elbow
round the edge of anguish, those straits
of countless miles, quarried by “Farewell.”
(It’s night there now) Ah, to have your cloudy hair
(They’ve gone to sleep) the kingdom of your shoulders!
(All lights are out) I d return them in the morning,
and the porch would greet them with a nodding branch.
O shield me. not with flakes, but with your hands,
pain’s ten sufficient fingers, the spikes
of winter stars, like the placards of delay
posted on trains northbound into blizzards!
9.
The trembling piano licks foam from its lips.
This delirium, tossing, will strike you down.
You murmur. “Dearest!” “No!” I cry back. “Never
in the midst of music!” And yet how could we be closer
than in the twilight here, the score like a diary,
page after page, year after year, tossed on the fire.
O wondrous memories that, luring us still,
astonish the spirit! But you are free.
I shan’t keep you. Go on. Give yourself to others.
Leave at once. Werther’s already had his day.
But now the air itself reeks death:
opening a window is like opening a vein.