Sol 5.6

  1. Strange—does longing drive me toward you?

    And in my whispers are a sigh and a moan.

  2. Know—may my soul ransom you—what ardent yearning is in me

    For you! Yet time is miserly.

  3. How can one utter poetry whose breast has lain all night

    Upon his heart, with illness buried there?

  4. If he seeks from this perishing world a breath of relief,

    A cold blocks his nose, then fails him.

  5. His eyes close upon their two pains,

    For fear of what already is and what is yet to be.

  6. He struggles against this illness, his spirit bewildered;

    And amid the body's motions, it brings stillness.

  7. I spend the long night drowsy yet sleepless;

    My eyes strive to close their lids.

  8. This breast grows still, though it is Hell itself;

    This heart dances, though it is sorrowful.

  9. How can one stricken with grief sleep through his night,

    Amid bitter life's cares and sorrows?

  10. He ponders the world with the thoughts of one dazed,

    Amid passing notions whose very state is madness.

  11. The excruciating illness kills him for an age;

    The world of his thought grows dark and loses worth.

  12. I see death drawing near my bed, and I recoil,

    Wondering what it might be.

  13. I die while, in my homeland, a mission rests upon me—

    If one day it is hidden, it shall become manifest.

  14. I die with hopes buried in my breast;

    If they set forth striving, what lies buried will surge.

  15. I die with strange inclinations in my heart,

    Disclosed by anguish and moaning.

  16. I die with many faults within my soul;

    I try to cleanse it of them, but they disfigure it.

  17. Whenever one of their strongholds is razed, another rises;

    Or when one fortress falls, whole fortresses arise.

  18. I die, my spirit bewildered—how can it guard itself

    Against the hosts of desires that coat it in rust?

  19. I die with no solace in my life,

    Nor any ideal for which to live and profess belief.

  20. O death, you who are coming—

    I wonder: do I truly see, or is what I see certain?

  21. O death, you who mock at my weakness—

    Tarry! There are matters in the heart.

  22. I would never have feared death but for a page

    That, if it turned blank, would let stillness reign.

  23. Then I would leave a world I so often wished to be far from,

    For death itself has my ardor and longing.

  24. Before my eyes loom the phantoms of my present,

    And shades of a past I do not see adorning my present.

  25. So I ask myself: is what I see reality?

    Does it terrify me, or is what I see mere conjecture?

  26. The body's sickness is felled by another sickness I conceal:

    A vacant stupor, with madness in one of its two hands.

  27. Then I forget the sickness and wasting that afflict me,

    As bewilderment and torpor engulf my soul.

  28. The strangest malady within me is one whose slightest measure

    Keeps increasing, though its rending pain subsides.

  29. O bedfellow of sickness, be patient—for this

    Life of yours is a phantom, vanishing and appearing.

  30. For others besides you among humankind are sick—their lives

    Are dust, with death within their souls, and abasement.

Sol 5.6