Sol 5.6

  1. You have possessed my mind, my sight, and my hearing,

    My spirit, my innermost being—my whole self, all of me.

  2. You left me bewildered in your wondrous beauty,

    And I knew not where I stood in love’s flowing course.

  3. You charged me not to disclose your secret,

    But my streaming tears divulged what I concealed.

  4. And when my patience was spent and my endurance grew frail,

    Sleep forsook me, and my bed was forbidden me.

  5. I went before love’s judge and said, “My beloved

    Have shunned me, and they say: ‘You are but a pretender in love.’”

  6. Yet I have witnesses to my passion and sorrow

    Who attest my claim whenever I come to plead:

  7. My sleeplessness, my ecstasy, my grief, and my anguish,

    My yearning, my sickness, my pallor, and my tears.

  8. How strange that I yearn for them

    And, longing, ask about them while they are with me;

  9. My eye weeps for them while they dwell in its dark pupil,

    And my heart laments their distance while they are within my ribs.

  10. If they demand of me what their love is owed,

    I am a pauper, with nothing upon me and nothing in my possession.

  11. And if they imprison me in the prisons of their estrangement,

    I enter their presence with the intercessor whose plea is granted.

Sol 5.6