A Lament

I. One Life, one Fate, one Love… That one-time, ravishing, sudden love, peeling the layers of years lived in apathy, —finally reaching your soul; Times, when you were anonymous to yourself, walking hollow and weary in the penumbra of your life; And that one-time love, thrown at the mercy of Fate to decide its lasting; Upon forehead from birth engraved: ‘Predestined life you do not own.' II. Why give light to heart, and then torture it with such cruelty? — Leave it there in its blindness, in that comfortable slumber to dream, but never to feel it: — Do not tease it mercilessly with impermanence: Fate! You, thief of immortal dreams! — Forget about me; for I have died, both for my dreams and my love. III. No inflamed fluidity is rushing hungry to my heart—my blood, congealed in putrid purple veins—inert: Do you see mirrors to heaven in my eyes? Does my heart pulsate in rhythm of celestial bliss? Does it flutter its wings in sync with the angelic Cupid? Does it surrender itself to Love in ecstasy, to relish the nectar of Life? — No! —You cannot perturb my comfort with illusions now! I no longer dream, nor hope for Beauty! IV. Do not seduce this heart with Hope: — Look, how well preserved it is beneath the icy triangle! —its icicles will pierce your warmth: it will not dissolve again beneath your touch: — You, phantasmagorical, delicious delirium of the past! — Were you ever real, or mind-conceived, I wonder, when I was undulating lost-and found in your oceans: eyes crystalline—mirrors to my soul; When I touched you and felt myself alive: — Were you real then? —Was I, too? For now, even death is more alive than I am.