“I am not jealousof what came before me.Come with a manon your shoulders,come with a hundred men in your hair,come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,come like a riverfull of drowned menwhich flows down to the wild sea,to the eternal surf, to Time!Bring them allto where I am waiting for you;we shall always be alone,we shall always be you and Ialone on earth,to start our life!”

“In you the earth… Littlerose,roselet,at times,tiny and naked,it seemsas though you would fitin one of my hands,as though I’ll clasp you like thisand carry you to my mouth,butsuddenlymy feet touch your feet and my mouth your lips:you have grown,your shoulders rise like two hills,your breasts wander over my breast,my arm scarcely manages to encircle the thinnew-moon line of your waist:in love you loosened yourself like sea water:I can scarcely measure the sky’s most spacious eyesand I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.”

“Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence, without you moving, slicing the noon like a blue flower, without you walking later through the fog and the cobbles, without the light you carry in your hand, golden, which maybe others will not see,which maybe no one knew was growing like the red beginnings of a rose. In short, without your presence: without your coming suddenly, incitingly, to know my life, gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind: since then I am because you are, since then you are, I am, we are, and through love I will be, you will be, we will be.”

“Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,without your going, that cuts noon lightlike a blue flower, without your passinglater through fog and stones,without the torch you lift in your handthat others may not see as golden,that perhaps no one believed blossomedthe glowing origin of the rose,without, in the end, your being, your comingsuddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:and it follows that I am, because you are:it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:and, because of love, you will, I will,We will, come to be.”

“I am everybody and every time,I always call myself by your name.”

“With a chaste heart With pure eyes I celebrate your beautyHolding the leash of bloodSo that it might leap out and trace your outline Where you lie down in my Ode As in a land of forests or in surfIn aromatic loam, or in sea musicBeautiful nudeEqually beautiful your feetArched by primeval tap of wind or soundYour ears, small shellsOf the splendid American seaYour breasts of level plentitudeFulfilled by living lightYour flying eyelids of wheatRevealing or enclosingThe two deep countries of your eyesThe line your shoulders have divided into pale regionsLoses itself and blends into the compact halves of an apple Continues separating your beauty down into two columns ofBurnished goldFine alabasterTo sink into the two grapes of your feetWhere your twin symmetrical tree burns again and risesFlowering fireOpen chandelierA swelling fruit Over the pact of sea and earth From what materialsAgate?Quartz?Wheat?Did your body come together?Swelling like baking bread to signal silvered hills The cleavage of one petal Sweet fruits of a deep velvet Until alone remainedAstonished The fine and firm feminine form It is not only light that falls over the world spreading inside your bodyYet suffocate itselfSo much is clarity Taking its leave of youAs if you were on fire within The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”

“Over your breasts of motionless current,over your legs of firmness and water,over the permanence and the prideof your naked hairI want to be, my love, now that the tears arethrowninto the raucous baskets where they accumulate,I want to be, my love, alone with a syllableof mangled silver, alone with a tip of your breast of snow.”