translations dedicated
              to my favorite
              Fervent Person:
              Eirin Moure




To be great, be entire: nothing
        Yours exaggerate or exclude.
Be all in each. Put all you are
        In the smallest thing you do.
So in each lake the whole moon
        Shines, for it lives on high.





I love the roses from the gardens of Adonis,
Lydia, I love those volucrines, the roses,
        For on the day they bloomed,
        On that day they died.
Light for them is eternal, since
They bloomed after the sun rose, and died
        Before Apollo left
        His visible course.
So let us make our life one day,
Ignorant, Lydia, willfully,
        Of the night surrounding
        The little we last.





There is a color obsesses me I hate,
A color insinuates itself into my dread.
        Is it because colors
        Have power of persistence
        Like phantoms in our soul?
There is a color obsesses me and hour by hour
Its color becomes the color my soul is.





Not only who hates us or envies us
Limits us and oppresses; who loves us
        Limits us no less.
May the Gods grant that I, stripped
Of affections, have the cold liberty
        Of empty pinnacles.
Who wants little, has everything; wants nothing,
Is free; has not, and desires not,
Though human, may equal the Gods.





If to each thing there is a god belongs,
Why should there not be a god in me?
        Why should it not be me?
It is in me the god quickens, because I feel it.
I see the external world clearly —
        Things, men, soulless.





Lydia, we ignorant are strangers
Wherever we dwell. All is other,
        Does not speak our language.
Let us fashion of ourselves the retreat
Wherein we hide, fearful of the insulting
        Tumult of the world.
What wish of love more than it not be another’s?
Like a secret spoken in the mysteries,
        May this be sacred in ours.





Rigorous, I relate. As much as think, I feel.
        Words are ideas. Murmurous,
The river runs, and the sound, unending,
        Is ours, not the river’s.
So I want verse: mine and another’s,
        Also read by me.





I behold fields, Neaera,
Green fields, and feel
One day will come the time
When I see them no more.

Tranquil, I only take pleasure,
As one playing, in conceit
Of serene sadness,
Child of clear vision.





What we feel, not what is felt,
Is what we have. Certain winter straitens.
        As fate let us receive it.
May there be winter on earth, not in mind,
And, love by love, or book by book, we love
        Our momentary hearth.





Numberless live in us;
I think or feel, ignorant
Of who is thinking or feeling.
I am only the place where
Someone feels or thinks.

I have more than one soul.
There are more I’s than I.
Even so I exist
Indifferent to them all.
I silence them: I speak.

Crossed impulses of that
Which I feel or do not feel
Dispute in who I am.
I ignore them. They dictate nothing
To whom I know I am: I write.



•—•—•—•—•

First posted by Berkeley Neo-Baroque Gang of One, 3.12.2006
Translation based on the critical edition by Manuela Parreira da Silva
Under continuous revision, augmentation and correction
Reproduction rights granted upon request
Many, many thanks to Dana Stevens