Do not ask me the secret of my burning tears, for some secrets refuse to be made clear

Some prefer to live as a riddle beyond the senses, though they be wounded

Some, if you unveil them, turn into a humiliated love that dies a sorrowful death

Some, some are too proud to unveil what lies behind them or between us

Hundreds of secrets lie hidden in a tear of sorrow glimmering in two eyes

Hundreds of riddles in a stillness that trembles behind the closing of two lips

And eyes behind whose lashes are phantoms of despair, bewildered and broken

Preferring shade and darkness, in terror of a light that gives secrets away

And hearts that gather their torn fragments over wounds and tears and stupor

Preferring death out of pride, never uttering the secret, the timid hope

And lips that die of thirst and never ask: where is the nectar? Where is the cup?

And souls that feel the deepest feeling and seem as though they do not feel

And palms that long to tear, to kill, to rebel in madness

Which, if life saw them, it would say: a gentle calm, in innocence and stillness

If it saw them — what would it see? Everything drowned behind dark curtains

A thousand veils and a thousand shadows of deep suppression, a thousand fetters and yokes

Do not ask me, do not wound the secret in my soul, do not deny my silence its pride

If I spoke, in every word would lie the grave of a dream and the bursting of a deadly wound

If I spoke — how the verses would tremble with sorrow and be flung into a cloak

If I unveiled the deep secret, what would be left of me but torn fragments

If I spoke — a tremor in my brow and my whole being insists that I speak

While my deep silence smothers my breath, and my heart is close to shattering

If I spoke, if I kept silent — two calls deep as life, set ablaze

Upon them all my secrets converge, and I remain poetry and love and fire

And life goes on shaping from my face a hard mask with an overflow of pretense

Rigid, cold, deaf, hiding a certain something I have named pride