World was in the face of the beloved.
Suddenly it poured out and was gone:
world is outside, world cannot be grasped.

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space
in which you see all forms intensified.
(Out in the Open, you would be denied

There stands death, a bluish distillate
in a cup without a saucer. Such a strange
place to find a cup: standing on

Often I gazed at you in wonder: stood at the window begun
the day before, stood and gazed at you in wonder. As yet the new town
seemed denied to me, and the unpersuaded landscape kept darkening

We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most
intimate. From images that are full, the spirit’s
stream plunges down to others that suddenly must be filled;

You who never arrived
in my arms, beloved, who were lost
from the start,

Now shall I praise the cities, those long-surviving
(I watched them in awe) great constellations of earth.
For only in praising is my heart still mine, so violently

Gentle reader, being—as you are—
a cautious man of uncorrupted tastes,
lay aside this disobliging work,

You used to be jealous of our old nurse
who sleeps, warm heart and all, beneath the sod.
We ought to bring her flowers, even so.

Have you felt—I have—a pain that you enjoyed?
Do they say about you, too: “How strange he is!”
—I was dying, and a special agony