MY LOVES (fragment)

Today they have returned.
Through all paths of the night they have come
To cry on my bed.
They were so many, they are so many!
I know not which are alive, I know not who has died.
I myself shall melt in sobs to cry for all of them.
The night drinks the tears like a black kerchief.

There are heads gilded by the sun, as if ripened …
There are heads touched by shadow and mystery,
Heads crowned by an invisible thorn,
Heads that the rose of reverie makes blush.
Heads that bend over cushions of the abyss,
Heads that would wish to rest in the sky,
Some that never succeed in smelling of spring,
And many that smell of the flowers of winter.
All those heads hurt me like wounds...
They hurt me like the dead …
Ah …and the eyes... the eyes hurt me even more: they are double!
Ill-defined, green, gray, blue, black
They burn as they shine,
They are caresses, grief, stars, hell.
Upon all their light, upon all their flames,
My soul was illuminated and my body tempered.
They made me thirst for all those mouths …
For all those mouths that flower in my bed:
Pale or red vases of honey or bitterness
With lilies of harmony or roses of silence,
From all those vases where I drank of life,
From all those vases where of death I drink...
The venomous and intoxicating garden of their mouths
Where I breathed in their souls and their bodies,