Sad Madrigal

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I.

What do I care if you be wise?
Be lovely! and be sad! For tears
Are as appealing on the face
As rivers in the countryside;
Flowers are freshened by the storm.

I love you most of all when joy
Escapes from your defeated brow;
Or when a horror drowns your heart;
When on your present day, a cloud
Out of the past deploys itself.

I love you when your great eye pours
A water warm as any blood;
When, under my consoling hand,
Your piercing anguish finds a voice -
The rattle of a dying throat.

I breathe, a luxury divine!
Profound, delicious hymn to me!
All of the sobbing of your breast,
And I believe your heart will glow
With pearls your eyes have cast away!


II.

I know your heart, that overflows
With all of your uprooted loves,
Flames always like a forge, and that
Beneath your breast you incubate
Some of the smugness of the damned;

But dear, as long as dreams of yours
Will not reflect the flames of Hell -
As long as in a nightmare's grip,
Dreaming of poisons, slashing blades,
In love with powder, cannon shot,

Dreading to answer any door,
Anatomizing misery,
Tormented by the tolling clock,
You will not suffer the embrace
Of irresistible Disgust -

You may not, oh my slave and queen
Who loves me only out of fear,
Horrified, in the fevered night,
With screaming soul proclaim to me:
'I am your equal, 0 my King!'


Přeložil James McGowan