The Song of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea Deserted like the wharves at dawn It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one! Cold flower heads are raining over my heart Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked In you the wars and the flights accumulated From you the wings of the song birds rose You swallowed everything, like distance Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver Turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank! In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire Sadness stunned you, in you everything sank! I made the wall of shadow draw back Beyond desire and act, I walked on Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness And the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar There was the black solitude of the islands And there, woman of love, your arms took me in There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me In the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms! How terrible and brief was my desire of you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs Still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs Oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies Oh the mad coupling of hope and force In which we merged and despaired And the tenderness, light as water and as flour And the word scarcely begun on the lips This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing And in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you What sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned! From billow to billow you still called and sang Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well Pale blind diver, luckless slinger Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour Which the night fastens to all the timetables The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate Deserted like the wharves at dawn Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one