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.

Wild honey smells of freedom The dust - of sunlight The mouth of a young girl, like a violet But gold - smells of nothing.

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

I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.

A loss, but who still mourns the breath of one woman, or laments one wife? Though my heart never can forget, how, for one look, she gave up her life.

This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.