Venice masks

Saturday, 19 December 2020

Hail! - Catherine Pozzi

Ardent love, if I were to die
Without having known where I possessed you,
In which sun was your abode,
In which past your time, in which hour
I have loved you!

Ardent love surpassing all memory,
More intense than the hearthside fire,
In which fate would you record my story?
In which slumber could be seen your glory?
O wondrous abode…

When I am lost to myself
And in infinite fragments at the boundless gulf
At which I shall end,
The present in which I am clothed
Will have revealed

Through the universe in a thousand broken pieces,
The ash of a thousand still uncollected moments,
Winnowed to the nothingness of the skies,
Where you would remake in a distant year
A single treasure.

You would remake my name and my image
From a thousand shreds carried daily away.
Long live faceless and nameless unity,
The heart of the spirit, essence of a vision:
Ardent love!

Catherine Pozzi (1882 - 1934) France
Translated by David William Paley

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