Where, on what pillow of the bed,

 Where, on what pillow of the bed,

The pregnant sand swelled up to cradle The tilted head of the violet, We sat, gaze against gaze. Our hands, hardened and cemented In the firm balm that comes from them, Our gazes braided and weaving The eyes into a double strand; To graft hand into hand is thus far Our only form of binding And to shape in the eyes the figures Our only propagation. And while soul with soul negotiates, Sepulchral statues there we remain All day in the same position, Without the slightest word, all day. If someone—by love so refined That he understood the language of souls, And by virtue of that love transformed Into pure thought—should draw near to them, He might (without knowing which soul spoke For both were one single word) Take a new sublimation from the instant And return purer than before. But just as souls are unknown mixtures That love realgams, It takes the mingled soul of the lover And composes two into one and one into two. It transplants the solitary violet: The strength, the color, the form, all that was Until now degenerated and rare Now multiplies and regenerates. For when love thus interanimated Two souls in one another, The better soul that springs from those two Defeats the lean solitude, And we who are that young soul, We already know our composition By this: the atoms from which we are born Are souls that no longer move. But what distance and distraction are ours! It does not suit our bodies to wage war: Not being us, it does not suit us to wage war: Intelligences, they are the spheres. On the contrary, we must be grateful to them For having drawn us (to us) near, Lending us strength and senses. Dross, no, but alloy that binds us. As blood works to give Spirits that conform to souls, For such fingers lack the grasp Of that invisible knot that makes us men, So the souls of lovers must Descend to the affections and faculties That the senses reach and perceive, Lest a Prince lie imprisoned. To the bodies, finally, let us return, Unveiling love to all the world; The mysteries of love, the soul feels them, But the body is the pages that we read. If someone—a lover like us—should have This dialogue reach a single ear for both, Let him observe still and he will see no Change when we turn to the bodies.