Talk of the Heart: From the Depths

Speak to me of him, my heart, for all my breast is filled, toward him, with the awakening of a longing — and what a longing!

Repeat in my ear the tale of my life with him, O heart... Four years!... Their days like the breaking of light upon the summits of Sannine, and each of their nights held the ululation of a virgin wedding, in which happiness had a pasture — and what a pasture!

And in the flood of our love, we thought this bliss of ours a companion for life, that it would fill our youth as a gentle lifetime and lean upon the staff of our old age.. But we were living in a deceiving mirage.

And in the black hour... the reckless axe fell upon our infant love, tearing its heart from between its ribs.. Woe to it! Woe to it for what it did!! Who dares to look?! Who dares to listen?!... And how did I wake — I tremble at the horror of the calamity, in the stupor of the idiot who heeds nothing!!

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Have you heard, my heart, the tale of the mighty pine at the Overlook of Choueir — how the thunderbolt split it, on a raging night: one half burned and withered down below, and the other half remained, in its silent loftiness, bleeding the blood of its dead twin?? As for its wailing and its lament, the storm wrapped them in the cloak of its own howling and clamor and carried them far... far from the hearing of the other pines on the overlook!!

This is my tale — the summary of my four years with him... Yes, I have lived on after him, but I have lived as a second woman, her heart wrapped in ice, searching in vain, in her desolate exile, for the mate who went away and did not return!

... All my hope now, my heart, is two little fledglings in the innocence of their childhood, clinging to me, warming my cold nights and making life dear to me with their sweet prattle!

... When deep sleep closes their eyelids, in the night, I kneel beside their beds and search their two faces, with insistent longing, for the features of a beloved who is gone, and I call back to my mind the memories of four years.. they are the summit of my happiness, and the summit of my love!