Belovèd - Francisca Stoecklin

Let yourself again and again
Be embraced by my words.
Let them lie around you
Like the coat
That you drape about me
When, in the cool of autumn evenings,
We walk across the fields
Where silver mists
Are sinking early
And breezes stir the grass.

Aimlessly, I roamed
Over the great wide earth,
Oppressed and enticed
By dark
And dazzling sins.
Then you rose
As the sun of my fate.
Your light tempered
All that was rough and raw,
Placed within my waking hours,
All beings and things
From aches to blissfulness.
For, you have united
The tenderness of a girl
With the protective strength
Of a youth.
You are the smiling flower
And illuminating torch.
- And your mouth says
That, weak though I be, to you,
I am, also, divinely fair.

---

Francisca Stoecklin (1894- 1931) Switzerland
Translated by David Paley
Source: Poems without Frontiers