The Sorrowing Girl

On the stone of patience
you sat at nightfall,
the black of your eye
revealing your pain;

on your lips the line
that's naked and trembles
when the soul spins
and sobs plead;

in your mind the motive
that starts tears
and you were a body that from the verge
returns to fruitfulness;

but your heart's anguish
was unmoaning, became what gives the world
a starfilled sky.

Yorgos Seferis, Collected Poems (1922 - 1955), Edmund Kelley e Philip Sherrard (trad., ed., e intr.), Princeton University Press, 1971.