Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Versions by Aleksandra Hernandez

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The light shrouds you in its mortal flame.

Absorbed, painfully pale, placed in this way

Against the ancient helicals of the dusk 

That rotates like a lathe around you.

Mute, my friend,

Alone in the solitude of this time of death

And full of the lives of fire,

Sheer heiress of the day destroyed.

From the sun, beams of light fall on your dark dress.

At night large roots

Suddenly grow from your soul,

And secrets you’ve concealed resurface,

In a manner that nourishes a pale and noble people

Recently born of you.

Oh magnificent, fertile and alluring slave

Of the dark and golden circle where it all happens:

Proud, you arduously accomplish a creation so alive

That its flowers surrender — a creation so full of sadness