(translated by Donald D. Walsh)

What’s wrong with you, with us,

what’s happening to us?

Ah our love is a harsh cord

that binds us wounding us

and if we want

to leave our wound,

to separate,

it makes a new knot for us and condemns us

to drain our blood and burn together.

What’s wrong with you? I look at you

and I find nothing in you but two eyes

like all eyes, a mouth

lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,

a body just like those that have slipped

beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world

like a wheat-colored jar

without air, without sound, without substance!

I vainly sought in you

depth for my arms

that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:

beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,

nothing,

beneath your double breast scarcely

raised

a current of crystalline order

that does not know why it flows singing.

Why, why, why,

my love, why?