Besme:
You are like the tongue hidden in a dark place!
If it is true, as water gushes out of the earth,
That nature likewise from between the lips of the poet has opened up to us an abundance of words,
Tell me whence comes that breath made into words by your mouth.
For, when you speak, like a tree which with all its leaves
Trembles in the silence of noon, peace gradually takes the place of thought in us.
By means of that song without music and that word without voice, we are fused with the melody of the world.
You explain nothing, O poet, but all things through you become understandable.
Coeuvre:
O Besme, I do not speak as I wish, but I conceive in sleep.
And I could not explain whence I draw that breath, for it is the breath drawn from me.
Dilating the hollow I have in me, I open my mouth,
And, breathing the air, into that legacy of himself by which man each second breathes out the image of his death,
I restore an intelligible word.
And, having said it, I know what I said.
Thus I slowly succeed in making plain your suffering.
Besme:
Is it not true, O Coeuvre, that every word is an answer or calls up an answer?
And that is why every verse other than yours,
Meter or rhyme, requires or contains
An element exterior to itself.
Coeuvre:
That is true.
Besme:
But who questions you or whom do you answer?
Where is that exchange, that mysterious respiration you speak of?
Coeuvre:
It is true, Besme, and you have appropriately discovered my suffering.
I am surrounded by doubt and terrorized I feel the echo.
Every word is an explanation of love, but, although my heart is full,
Who loves me, or who can say that I love?
Such is the wine of the grape which some drink sweet,
And which one man puts in reserve in his cellar, and which another
Distills into a burning brandy, by the transformation of sugar.