The memory of you emerges from the night around me
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea
Deserted like the wharves at dawn
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked

In you the wars and the flights accumulated
From you the wings of the song birds rose

You swallowed everything, like distance
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse

Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver
Turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire
Sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back
Beyond desire and act, I walked on

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness
And the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar

There was the black solitude of the islands
And there, woman of love, your arms took me in

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
In the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs
Still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs
Oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
In which we merged and despaired

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour
And the word scarcely begun on the lips

This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing
And in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you
What sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel

You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
Which the night fastens to all the timetables

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate
Deserted like the wharves at dawn
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one