A Woman's Song

They say that I am finished,

and that in my heart no lamp

remains, and no oil remains!

•

I pass by the roses — what do they care

whether I laughed for them or wept?

And the roses hold, in my eyes

and in my thoughts,

a morning by which I effaced, and was effaced!

•

I am darkness and the remnants of a sunset

that pave my paths through the impossible

and let me slip away like fragrance, like carnelian,

like a song out of a distant age,

and plant me in hearts as beauty,

as illusion of far reach, and as error,

and as light of ancient nights, and oil.

I am the bleeding foot

that says to my heart: blaze up, O morning!

I am the tempest

that says to my soul: play on, O winds!

I am flames and wounds;

I have filled hearts with error,

with illusion of far reach, and with beauty.

I love — oh, how I love my beauty!

and in it I worship my error;

of old I guided by it, and was guided!

•

I have thirsted. When, O my blood, O my youth,

will you say: I have drunk my fill?!

I thirsted for a tryst

on which I staked my tomorrow,

and which I fed morsels of my hand.

I thirsted for a heart wide and deep,

to pluck in flames along my road,

to store away in my veins,

and to leave between the living and the dead!

I have thirsted. When, O my blood, O my youth,

will you say: I have drunk my fill?!

•

They say that I am finished,

yet mine is the earth — mine her splendor and her pride;

her palms wound me and her bosom sucks at me;

if her thorns disdain me, her flowers snatch me up.

They say that I am finished,

yet mine are the ages:

when I come into their thoughts, they grow drunk.

They say that I am finished,

and on every road

a thousand hearts applaud me,

and a shadow laughs, and a house!

•

Tomorrow every mouth will murmur of me:

would that I had passed her way

and emptied into her lips

my youth and my art.

And would that I had sung

none but her... a thousand times, would that!

•

I have drunk every heart...

I drank as though grown drunk with ecstasy,

and I said, and I said... be kneaded into shape, O my existence,

and be what I have desired!