Let us forget, then
forget with deliberation
for memory is a perfumed poison,
and the present hour
alone possesses the cruelty and sweetness of truth.
The night sharpens itself; the stars puncture the sky
like fine needles sewing eternity into the flesh of darkness.
The moon, that pale courtesan of heaven,
leans over the gardens and teaches the queen of the night and evening primrose how to dream.
I walk, burdened with thought as a vice,
my soul folded inward, bruised by its own excess.
Along the path, a wild rose rises
abandoned, arrogant, drenched in its own purity.
It knows nothing of morality, nothing of remorse;
it blooms with the insolence of innocence,
offering its fragile corruption to no one.
Oh strange communion!
I possess speech yet rot in silence.
It is mute, yet cries with every thorn.
I pass, enslaved to reflection,
while it remains nailed to the earth,
a saint of sap and blood,
ecstatic in its own wound.
Behind us, the darkness thickens like a drug,
a velvet abyss where my every thought dissolves.
Is the rose protected by its beauty,
or exposed by it?
Is my solitude a refuge,
or merely a more elaborate prison?
The plant desires nothing
and therein lies its cruelty.
It burns to be seen,
yet does not suffer neglect.
I desire everything,
and suffer even my breath.
Thus we stand opposed:
nature immaculate in its indifference,
man corrupted by his need.
Still, as I abandon it to the night,
a perverse rapture clings to me
the knowledge that even unheard cries
infect the air,
that beauty, unacknowledged,
is no less venomous nor less divine.
Oh moon, confessor of the sleepless,
Oh night, accomplice of my decay,
teach me this art of flowering in the dark
to offer myself utterly,
and to survive, like the rose,
without hope,
in my own becoming.