Translation:The Black Heralds (1918)/Pagan Woman
To go dying and singing. And to baptize the shadow
with a noble gladiator’s Babylonian blood.
And to sign off the golden carpet’s cuneiforms
with the nightingale’s quill and the blue ink of pain.
Life? Protean woman. To watch her slipping by
afraid in her veils, unfaithful, deceptive Judith;
to watch her from the wound, and to catch sight of her,
embedding a caprice of wax in a ruby.
Babylonian unfermented wine, Holofernes, without troops,
in the Christian tree I hung up my nest;
The redemptive vineyard denied love to my goblets;
Judith, treacherous life, cut down her body of a host.
Such a pagan feast. And to love her until death,
while the veins sow red pearls of evil;
and thus returning to the dust, hapless conqueror,
leaving thousands of eyes of blood on the dagger.