How delicate and fragile you are
How beautiful and pure
Like every child when born
Your hair silken and bedewed
Like the leaves of a young plant’s stem in April
Your lips are rose buds still to blossom
Hands the blue intimation of dawn
Legs as though you have none, you poor thing
They are like two lilies for caressing only
So how will you come into the world so tiny
So unguarded
That is why we shall never part, my darling
Never shall we say good-by
Never body of my body
Soul of my soul
Never
I know
You will carry me in your heart
For I gave you my heart and everything around my heart
You will carry me as long as you will
Greet the birth of day
And the appearance of stars
As long as you will be, greet the budding treetops
And grieve the falling leaves
You will live even when your eyes close
You will live in your children
In your children and the children of their children
You will live
Live

It will be known we were moments of being
A grain of sand in the shoal
A spark in the fire
A blade in the grass
Of eternity

How delicate and fragile
You are
And you must live
You must live among people, yet you have no words
You must live among wolves, yet you have no teeth
And how will you discern a man from a wolf
A wolf from a man
Your hands are the blue intimation of dawn
With them you need to grapple
To do battle in skirmishes
With serpent miracles in which the dragon dwells
So let them grow quickly
Let them grow stronger and still more quickly

Your legs are two delicate lilies for caressing
And I will ask you with dew from my most beautiful flower
I will tell you the most beautiful story
Of this and that other world
That you be ready for sweet
Dreams and for sleeplessness
In the heart of tight circles
In the thorns of long
Roads

Your lips are young buds
I will feed you water from the beak of a swallow
That you grow teeth to curse the fiend
That you coo for the good-hearted guest
It is wise to be silent in life
But if you speak a word
May it be as heavy as every truth
May it be said for man

You came here
Where it was most unwelcome to come
Here where it was most insane to arrive
Here where it was most heroic to appear
Because here one does not live only to be alive
Here one lives to die
Here as well one dies
In order to live

Now is the end of the song
Now are my words completed
Sleep
Sweetly

We will never part my darling
Never body of my body
Never soul of my soul
Never
Because you need
To continue your life
It is good you continue life on earth

Translated by Keith Doubt

The preceding text is copyright of the author and/or translator and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.