Sol 5.6

  1. My past torments me and wears me away—

    a longing run rampant with a madman’s frenzy.

  2. Where is healing, when for it my body musters

    nothing but delusions to tend me?

  3. I seek repose, but there is no repose; within

    my breast, a surging sea—treacherous.

  4. It heaves when longing grows fierce within it,

    and within it moans the groaning of one stabbed.

  5. It keeps pounding against its ribs,

    as though they were the bars of a prisoner.

  6. Longing itself yearns—and how it makes me swallow

    its bitterness, and spends the night making me drink.

  7. I raised it as a child, lavishing upon it

    whatever ease and tenderness it desired.

  8. But today, now that its arm has grown strong

    and it has flourished like the gardens’ blossoms,

  9. it accepted nothing but my youth and blood,

    provisions on which it lives while consuming me.

  10. How many a pitch-black night it clung to me,

    allowing itself no intimate friend but me.

  11. I catch its whisper speaking to me,

    and see its shadow walking at my side,

  12. exhaling a haze that blows across

    my face like the breath of volcanoes.

  13. And immense night enfolds us; there is no

    refuge like night for the wretched.

Sol 5.6