We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.

 

I love you that’s true I love you that’s false
crows on my tongue
wage war with swallows
we’ve got blackness inside our backs
But if one day the beloved
or the beauty comes along
we find our spinning tops again
sunlight scars the water
All around the air thins
we throw a shovel
of earth on the thighs
the ivy comes into focus
Migratory pleasures
you bequeath to the heart
decaying nymphs
and we go on living
gropingly under the waves
like crayfish
I love you
for you I write poems
to stop thinking
drunk on images
I invent margins
to prolong you
If I had at least
your name to speak
o my unknown my madwoman of the streets
honored in my veins
like a king by his empire
My needle of gold missing in the hay!

Translation by Justin Vicari