Darkness Spoken

Like Orpheus I play
death on the strings of life,
and to the beauty of the Earth
and your eyes, which administer heaven,
I can only speak of darkness.

Don't forget that you also, suddendly,
on that morning when your camp
was still damp with dew, and a carnation
slept on your heart,
you saw the dark stream
race past you.

The string of silence
taut on the pulse of blood,
I grasped your beating heart.
Your curls were transformed
into the shadow hair of night,
black flakes of darkness
buried your face.

And I don't belong to you.
Both of us mourn now.

But like Orpheus I know
life on the side of death,
and the deepening blue
of your forever closed eye.

Ingeborg Bachmann, Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems, Peter Filkins (trad.), Charles Simic (intr.), Zephyr Press, 2006.