A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me.

I myself, from the very beginning, Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium Or a reflection in someone else's mirror, Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. Already I knew the list of crimes That I was destined to commit.

Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.

I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house

I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.

We are all carousers and loose women here; How unhappy we are together!

But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud.