1. O silence, how I wish you could
Wrap me, or that I could

2. But something inside me seethes
So the snow flutters, and spring smolders

3. It cries, sings, rants listening
It’s the singer, the echo, the hearer

4. It raves so night crouches in my ribs
Scorching decrepit, or bleeding the frail

5. The stars cook dawn’s ashes
And the wind grinds the frost of dusk

6. And morning pants like an abandoned woman
Whose dreams invade her breasts

7. Something murmurs, inside me craves
It shrieks, it moans, like a monstrous din

8. It calls, like a prophet in a trance
And drags like a debauched man

9. So a lad lurks behind my bloom
And an old man rants, and an infant weeps

10. It starves until summer forgets
Its tryst, and the sleeper's sigh swoops

11. And the valley dashes, the hills teem
The pasture flees, and the flock bleats

12. What is that burden that drinks my
Throbbing, heedless obeying or not?

13. It sings so the nights of youth
Return to defiant dawn, or gentle calm

14. Visions reap dreams, the unborn lives
And the dead awakens, the ruined thrives

15. So the fragments begin in my letters
A joyous birth, a burden, and pain

16. These aimless, endless letters
Wherein my life was lost, lest it be lost

17. And I’m not among what I came
A merchant, though I feel, I see, I sell

18. To you, my readers, they are
With all their sorrows: exquisite torment