Is there a breast where beats a heart of flesh and of blazing
That knife or claw may open up and raid,
Is there an ocean, lake, or river, which the blade
Of oar or screw may spread on the waves beyond tracing,
Is there a breast or ocean, lake, river, or even
Earth itself, cloven by the main force of ploughs,
That cannot yield a crop, and belch from gaping jaws
The fish, the man who drowned, the disappeared orphan?
Better the hidden treasure, gem or gold or jewel,
Than the grave untenanted, better than the cadaver.
Better too, than the corn which is sown, is what for ever
Rusts to escape the jackdaws, namely metal.
What dagger shall ransack your belly and breasts, Hippolytê,
Sabina, Rosamund, even yours, Andromeda?
What gold-digger, what desperado, what murderer
Shall dispossess you, name your possessor-to-be?
If it illuminates the shadows in cavernous dens,
Or spurts from the flank of a lost child, floating away,
Or if clear streams to our modern lights convey,
Inset in a gem, the brightness of ancient suns,
If a royal profile that neither sees nor smells
Is replicated in vain against perdition,
Or if the time is told there on flowery dials,
Though stopped on the brink of a lengthy expedition,
What matter, for surging from every conch and horn
It shall be a receiver of flesh, more than of metals,
A fragrant flesh, through passages limitless
Wafting towards a glittering knife-sharp dawn!
A man, at the moment he senses in his mouth
The taste of stones, not the lips it’s his habit to taste,
Breaks off the journey that follows the beat in his wrist
That has pulsed ever since his feverish days of youth.
From now, as he rides, he feels as if welded on,
A centaur pursuing a quarry he understands
Can’t be caught. He chases it through its pasturelands,
Not needing now, but desiring, the object unknown.
Mad-drunkenness! The procession, the stream, the days
Cause him to share in the movement of all creation.
Out beyond joy, beyond the point of retracing,
Life and destiny bear him along on their waves.
But you women, where are you heading, a prey to age?
What images do you watch in your mirrors? For they
Are fraught with shipwreck, deeper every day.
Do you search for treasure to pay your hopes a wage?
White-headed, now it approaches, the carnival,
Bringing the treasure you hunted through the years.
For these are sounding masks, these are hollow tears
That won’t allow you to see your native soil.