POETRY
Many, though not all, of Martha Corey-Ochoa's poems concern the great love of her life, the eighteenth-century Russian prince Aleksei, whose wife she considered herself to be. Some also deal with her infidelity with a living boy and with the contrast between the period when she was madly in love with Aleksei and its sequel, "a cheap imitation of sanity."
Desire
perhaps I have been unclear
I do not want you to treat me like my father treats my mother
I want you to drag me to the top of a fiery volcano
and kiss me inches away from the scarlet streams of lava
I want you to pull me to the frozen swamps of your deathbed
and extend your ghostly hand to me from out of your decaying tomb
I pulled away from you
and with the iron grip of the reaper you tried to pull me back
in those days you obeyed my command
I told you possess me ruin me do not forsake me
you ignore this now like any sane man would
but we were never meant to be healthy
I do not need a plaything
I do not need an imaginary friend
I need a husband a lover a ghost
let me be obsessed with you
let me throw myself into your arms with the passionate abandon of a virgin
Last Night
Last night
The stars were shining
The moon was full
I walked with you under the stars
The night was beautiful and mysterious
We could have done anything
Last night
I loved you.
Supernova
For a moment it shone brighter than any other star in the empty night sky
Then it was gone.
For a moment its surface danced with the heat coursing through it
Then it froze forever.
For a moment its atoms vibrated with uncontrollable excitement
Then they stilled into calm oblivion.
For a moment it made the night seem like day
Then it plunged into eternal night.
For a moment, a glorious moment, I loved you.
Now, nothing.
Black
Black is the color of mourning, of grief that strikes suddenly and dies gradually.
Black is the color of neutrality, a staple for every wardrobe and a good way to blend in.
Black is the color of evil, an ideal evil unmarred by goodness or doubt.
Black is the color of keys on a piano, playing sharp and flat against the white keys’ natural.
Black is the color of nothing, the color produced by the absence of color.
Black is the forgotten color, the one they leave out in the roster of elementary school colors.
Black is the color of print on a page, the color by which knowledge is transmitted.
Black is the color of rotting, of the ruin to which other colors fall.
Black is the color of darkness, terrifying and beckoning.
Black is the color of a black hole, an all-consuming void where normal time and space break down.
Black is the color of outer space, broken by intermittent stars.
Black is the color of death, the only certain thing about life.
Black is the natural color of everything but light.
Black is the color of rebellion.
Black is the color of perseverance, of virtue gained through suffering.
Black is the widow whose burden is her strength, who goes on confident in the knowledge that
she will love him forever.
But black too can fade.
No Angel Cast Me Out of Eden Fair
No angel cast me out of Eden fair
Or pushed me toward the rising sun with glee
The harsh new day that broke th’ idyllic air
Was of my own design, as now I see.
Beliefs of love decayed within my core
Their products stable as a block of lead
To heights divine no longer will I soar
Confined instead to earth by fate’s tough thread.
The ancient sisters mock me as I smile
And give my hand to a triumphant boy
Napoleonic in his strength and style
He makes of me time’s plaything, instinct’s toy.
For him, for me I smooth my forehead creased
The dead are dead no longer, but deceased.
The Rebel
I lit the fire that would burn in the city of my mind
I ignited the spark of emotional revolution
I cursed sterile light and embraced fertile darkness
but took care not to lose the inferno
that spread like a cancer through my neurons
exciting electrical connections
I pledged myself to a noble traitor
I opened my lips for his ghostly kiss
I wrote glorious letters illumined by passion and grief
I saw reaction in the eyes of every progressive
I brandished the dagger of love
and fired bullets of resentment
I ripped off my flesh and drew my blood
I tortured myself in the name of the revolution
There was no one else to hurt.
Now,
The glow of the revolution is dying
My lover has left me
I sacrificed my pearl of great price for a cheap imitation of sanity
My darkness is lightening,
But my fires have gone out long ago.
Love Poem to Death
Embrace me, my beloved
I need the chill of your arms around me
Like a breath of winter air untouched by the dim disk of the sun
I live in darkness, away from his bright and mocking glare
No other lover can penetrate the bitterness of my heart
I am immune to the men of this world
Like Persephone, I want to be sucked through the earth into your kingdom where nothing grows
When you take me, I will never leave you
Even if I could swim the river of forgetfulness back to my native land, I would never do it
I will willfully suck pomegranate seeds
I will leave my faithful lutist at the gates of Hell
I will abandon all hope as I begin to love you
Let me be driven from you in eternal gusts of wind
Break me in your hands and crush me with your teeth
Let the ice of your skin burn my supple flesh
Will I find you in the crashing waves of the sea?
In the sudden shock of a bullet penetrating my brain?
In the agonies of poison hemlock eating away at my innards?
In the blood streaming from my arteries onto the expectant earth?
Possess me, ruin me, do not forsake me
Death, my lover.
Cliff’s Edge
Standing by the edge of a cliff and wondering whether to jump off
Not with the smiles and flying machines of the adventurers
that fall to pieces only when something physical malfunctions
Nor with the fear of the fugitive who unwillingly falls off
pushed by an enemy asserting his power
But with the maze of an intellect tormented by weakness
and an inwardly twisted will to power
We are the frustrated murderers of the world
Too troubled by conscience to raise a hand against our neighbor
We turn our necessary anger on ourselves
And self-destruction becomes the only escape from the torture
we create for ourselves
Stretched out on racks of scruples
Burned by the tantalizing flames of creative mania
We stand holding varied cups of poison to our mouths
Wishing we had the courage to drink them
But with our rational minds we drown ourselves
in proofs and equations that add up to zero
Refusing to embrace the animal we stand perpetually at the edge of the cliff
Staring at the cerulean cement of the waters below
The Violinist and His Dancer
He fell in love with her long neck and graceful phrases
her hard body that responded only to his touch
the way she sang him secret melodies.
Like a rose in early summer she bloomed,
and like a supernova she was fated to explode.
He tasted her death in every kiss,
felt the approach of absolute zero in every caress.
But she who balanced in first arabesque
was still his sun, his asymptote, the knife to his heart.
He treasured the blood that caked the inside of her pointe shoes
breathed in the oxygen of her grapefruit smell
measured her worth by the tears she shed
and lived in the shadows of her epaulement.
He gave her love; she gave him art.
She had the joy of Juliet, the gentleness of Giselle, and the faithlessness of Cressida,
for which he loved her all the more.
She leaped into his arms only to pirouette out of them;
her fouette turns cut him like whips,
and her developpes unfolded into the fog.
The scroll of his violin held his hieroglyphic secrets;
its wood his flammable passion.
Its strings vibrated under his bow just as she trembled under his body.
He scaled the heights of her castle only to find
that the green light at its summit
had burned out.
She lay frozen in a tutu of crepe
as a fiery ring charred the fourth finger of her left hand.
Neither Egyptian asp, nor happy dagger, nor flowery waters had killed her;
her will alone was the cause of her death.
Her savior stands on Golgotha’s peak,
in love with the form of a mortal goddess.
Tightrope Walker
She walks across the taut rope
footsteps perfectly coordinated
body straight and balanced
gaze focused on her goal.
Below her
the audience.
Who have chosen the easier life.
Who do not reach her, though some try
balancing less effectively on lower, lesser ropes.
To them, she seems perfect
From down there, no one can see the little trembles
that rock her.
How near she has sometimes come
to falling.
That is all she sees, the things
that go wrong.
The position she cannot quite make
The near slip of a foot
The out of balance step.
She has seen what goes right, but is not supposed to
For were she to realize the immensity of her achievements
she would not be able to contain it.
And were it to spill out
it would not be right
to share it with those below, to brag about it …
So she keeps it from herself.
Yet it would not be right for her to complain, either,
voice her disappointments
when she achieves
a lesser degree of excellence.
For her minor, infrequent mistakes
are nothing
Compared with the consistent failures of those below.
No way to share how she feels
engaged in a delicate dance of morality.
Her arm slips from its arch above her head.
in its wake, her foot slips too.
Gasping for breath, she regains balance.
Thoughts filled with how dangerously close she had come
to failure.
She has not realized it until now, but there are others above her
Whose ropes are thinner and harder
Whose movements are more coordinated, yet effortless
As far above her as she is above her audience.
Every step has become an effort
She cannot let herself falter
Every mistake is one step closer to failing
She cannot let that happen.
Yet she would not have it any other way
to be less than perfect is unthinkable
she could not settle for a life of normalcy
So she keeps striving
for her life of perfection.
Entropy
like a puzzle and every time you fit it together you lose some of it
like everything must fit until it becomes nothing
like why wouldn’t you want to be part of it
why should anything else matter
like when you’re alone they’ll trap you anyway
it doesn’t matter how you float because soon you’ll sink
hope is unstable knowledge too
throw it away let yourself die
you don’t belong alone you don’t belong at all
follow the cycle until it kills you everyone else too
and the order you thought you didn’t want
why should it matter to you anyway then you’re gone what else is there
scrambled pieces of a worthless rebellion
play your petty collusions
hate and kill and whine and frown and smile and be happy about it all
it’s not your fault anyway nothing is
you’re nothing everything else is nothing it’s all an illusion
smile you want to look good for the camera
you are on a stationary bicycle that happens to be moving
you are a single point
time and space are an illusion so is life you are not alive
you are not nothing either yet
you are almost empty space don’t worry keep playing
soon you will be nothing too
The Death of the Sun
and i feel the burst of the sun’s rays in my heart
i feel its heat burning the surface of our hearts
i feel its ultra-violet radiation piercing our defenses
i feel its poisonous gamma rays in every room
every chamber of our lives
and i feel the burst of the sun’s rays in my heart
i feel the dust of civilization crumbling in my hands
i feel the pride of the earth crushing beneath my feet
i see great buildings collapsing in my eyes
i feel their dust return to dust
and i feel the burst of the sun’s rays in my heart
i feel atoms of hope fusing into reality
i feel atoms of faith falling on themselves into confusion
i feel atoms of love in a fission reaction
i feel them split into base survival
the burning ionized plasma flowing over us in confusion
and i feel the burst of the sun’s rays in my heart
i feel corrosive acid destroying human bonds
i feel it seeping into our souls
i feel my soul burn
as the souls of those around me
lie in waste on a molten ground
and i feel the burst of the sun’s rays in my heart
i feel my mind collapsing on itself
my violin and books beside me sucked into the flaming hydrogen
i feel our intellectual complexity simplified in the flames with them
as we who deigned to rule the planet return to primordial chaos
and i feel the burst of the sun’s rays in my heart
i feel dust polluting our atmosphere
i feel the wrath of the sun against that which would block its light
i feel showers of extraterrestrial dust rain on our conquered world
i watch the remains of human souls vaporize
into this soulless hell
and i feel the burst of the sun’s rays in my heart
i feel the universe expanding
i feel it getting colder with every step
i feel myself sinking into the blessed entropy
i feel my dead soul burn into absolute coldness
i feel tiny molecular activity, barely enough to save us
and i feel the death of the sun inside my heart
CTY 2008
Soft flowing breezes like the folds of a satin gown
Watermelon edges to the midday horizon
Crickets chirping through the lazy summer nights
Sunlight burning down on my black shirt
Torrential rains flooding the twilight streets
Red lawn chairs a place to contemplate our love
Tears of Andromache and Priam for their fallen warrior
Wars that cause fathers to bury sons
Linguistic duality of suffering and experience
Laughter shared with intellectual companions
Teenage ballerinas marked by haughty grace
Innocent heartfelt phone calls home
Seeing your face in the jack of hearts
Speaking cryptically of Russia to strangers
Kissing my date and thinking of you
Dancing without a partner to songs about love
Dreaming of you in a darkened room
Playing a cheerful song on a sorrowful violin
Maiden Widow Bride
I. Maiden
When she first heard his name
he was just another slightly interesting fact
not much
but she wanted to learn more.
When she next heard his name
she had sought it out
She thought simple acquaintance with him would satisfy her
but no.
More and more, she needed.
Every day she breathed his name upon waking
and prayed that he would haunt her dreams.
Her longing for sex and love was quelled
she had found the love, if only in her dreams.
But out of her dreams it came, love so true
passion hitherto unknown to her.
The words of lovers great and small were revealed to her
in their splendor.
He was so much more than a crush.
The maiden’s heart was won, through no effort on his part
simply his being attracted her
and called forth the latent love in her heart.
From her confidants she hid her passion
they knew nothing of the unhappy maid’s love and secret joy.
He seldom entered her dreams of night, but in day
she dreamed of him constantly;
at night the adrenaline of love kept the maiden awake.
As long as she could love she could rejoice.
II. Widow
She could see his death when she decided to fall in love
she did it to herself
made herself a widow by choosing him to love.
From a crop of living breathing boys around her she chose none
choosing instead him who was many years dead.
Why she loved him so, she could not say.
Why she mourned him, she could say neither,
since he in Heaven was happier than she left behind,
and his joy should have sufficed to make her happy.
But on the day of his death she dressed in black,
a widow though no official vows had been taken.
She alternated between faith in her love
and fear that it was sinful and would doom her to Hell.
She swore she could love forever
but doubted the veracity of her love.
The torture of her doubt joined her with him
who had died by torture.
Yet tears seldom flowed from her eyes
she was beyond such trifles
or were her joys and sorrows trifles
unworthy of tears?
Others rejoiced around her, but the maiden widow
maintained a perpetual distance.
Pain thrilled her and drew her to him,
but loss only worsened the pain of their separation.
Others chatted and laughed nearby;
she begged him to speak to her and take her away.
How her heart longed for him;
her soul ached for him, draped in its black clothes of mourning;
a lifetime was such a long time to wait
for a union that remained a maybe.
His initials she dug fresh into her arm every morning
she longed for blood to pour from the marks
and verify her love.
III. Bride
The joy came in the night
as her soul waited
a violin whose music is melancholy
and yet holds such promise of real joy
not false cheer like those around her possessed
those to whom she was a shy, lonely, unhappy child.
How false their joy to the child they pitied!
For she is child no longer, but bride, his bride.
A marriage of longing has joined them
the man in heaven and his devoted wife on Earth.
Years are nothing to them who love.
There is no marriage in Heaven, it says;
none indeed, not in the earthly sense.
She does not need that marriage, the maiden bride.
Greater joy awaits her,
an eternal walk with her love in the paths of their Lord
possession of each other, who both belong to God
worship, truth, love await them in the Holy and Eternal City.
And they will be happy, who mourned and suffered,
the quiet widow and her dear love.
Blessed are they who mourned, for as long as they can love
they will surely rejoice.
I Am
I am an electron orbiting a single proton.
I am the blood pressed from my cut finger onto a paper containing the date of his death.
I am the pomegranate seed that promises servitude to death.
I am the rip in my page where my pen pressed too hard.
I am the leftover meat on my plate.
I am the broken A string on a violin.
I am the warning against ingestion on the back of a bottle of laundry detergent.
I am the black dress that I wore on the night I tried to be unfaithful to him.
I am Kurtz’s Intended.
I am the sum of two and two.
I am the manic waltz of the Symphonie Fantastique, and the witches’ dance too.
I am a tree cut down to make a book about him.
I am the equality of two rays with different starting points.
I am the cold wind that bites at my face and reminds me of the power of our love.
I am a supernova, and the subsequent black hole.
I am the point at which a curve touches its asymptote.
I am the Earth in the instant after Adam’s fall.
I am a universe that crunches into nothing and expands again.
I am the wife of a dead man.
O Tepid Hearts
O tepid hearts, from you spring vapid words!
From you the hatred of the world is born,
Which though it starts without the sharpened swords
Soon overcomes the day, consumes the morn.
In night the titled fools joust gleefully
Their field glows with artificial light
The sweet girls cackle, jostling to see
Which man will triumph in the worthless fight.
But I with grieving heart and bitter eyes,
Fast pulse rate, red shoes, and a dress of black,
Watch from a distance this dull group’s demise
My proud intent to gain what others lack.
Upon me Satan swoops, his work complete
I am too proud to kiss my Savior’s feet.
Atheism on a College Campus
The light green trees surround her
but she cannot be happy.
She laughs and smiles with her friends
they stroll together down the concrete paths
Everywhere there is the beauty of new life
Reason at its most safely glorious
The sun streams directly from the sky
falling on the golden green grass
where happy young men throw frisbees
and mothers push their little children in strollers
The children hold tightly to their raggedy toys
but she has nothing to believe in.
The beautiful campus, buzzing with life,
is it spacious or empty?
The chapel stands cold and clean, like any other
of the majestic neoclassical buildings
ashamed to reveal its superrational warmth
The sun beats down but it is infinitely cold
the life-giving rays fall into a glorious emptiness
as she smiles and strolls and pretends and makes herself believe
But she has nothing to believe in.
My Asymptote
I am a curve; you are my asymptote,
The line that I approach and never touch,
A castle bounded by a stagnant moat,
A stately vault for one I love too much.
Beneath clean sheets you took my mortal hand
And placed your ghostly fingers there in such
A tender way that I saw your demand
For fatal love as nothing but a gift.
What blessed soul would gaze upon the band
Of cursed women and therein would sift
To find and rescue an unhappy girl
Whose smotherèd potential cut a rift
Between her and the dancing, smiling swirl
Of other girls whom trouble did not haunt
As it did her; who but the wealthy churl
Who grimly bore false fortune’s every taunt
Who gave himself to torture, whose disgust
Of power led the world to hate his gaunt
And feeble frame, to craft no marble bust
So future men might look at him in awe,
But rather let his dust return to dust.
This is the man for whom I break the law
Of nature, crossing boldly Styx’s stream
And dodging Cerberus’ slashing paw,
Descending to a realm of frozen steam
And wind-racked lovers, boiling lakes, and trees
Inhabited by men whose souls would teem
With self-turned hate and unseen heresies
Who, lacking an external stake and fire,
Would steal from paradise the shining keys
And, like the Queen of Carthage, build a pyre
On which they might dissolve their earthly chains
Not realizing that their proud desire
To die before God deigned to end their pains
Would drag them down to hell, where no star shines.
I saw this ruined orchard’s crooked lanes,
Its wilted maples, sycamores, and pines,
The tears that dangled, paralyzed, from eyes
That witnessed but rejected all the signs
Sent by their Lord to stifle their good-byes
To Him and his good saints. O, sinful pride!
You are the root of evil’s ugly cries.
How wretched are we all, save Him who died
For love of us, and whom we still betray!
We stand alone, unwilling to abide
With our Creator in eternal day.
The narrow road has lost for me its charm;
Too uniform and binding are the way,
The truth, the life, the prophets’ loud alarm.
No, I would rather die of love for you
Than turn away from you and passion’s harm.
My love is heresy that springs anew
From bloody, warm, and sin-polluted lakes,
Yet like a foolish sparrow I still coo
To you, my dear, my light among the rakes
And vagabonds whom virtuous girls reject,
Aware of the grave paths that their mistakes
Will lead them down if they do not select
Salvation’s road before it is too late.
You, too, may stand among the great elect,
And, doing so, ignore the rotting bait
With which I long to snare you in the net
Of my brown hair, to match your rapid gait
To my own steps upon a path beset
With all the curses of our jealous God,
And, for an instant, like the black stone jet,
Which through the dismal caves its pathway clawed
And in the transient light proudly outshone
Bright gemstones that on normal paths did plod,
I now intend to outshine all that’s known
As holy, good, and humble. How I long
For that catastrophe! that starry groan
Resounding through the vacuum by its song
Of heresy and pride in minor strains,
That supernova’s pinnacle of wrong,
Creating pits and mountains from the plains
Of God’s smooth universe. Yes, this is love!
Love is not that which holiness restrains,
It is not borne by the sweet, peaceful dove,
It is not the eternal, happy day
That prophets claim will come from God above.
True love eclipses virtue’s golden ray;
I bear this love to you, my Aleksei.
To Mourn or Not to Mourn
To mourn, or not to mourn, that is the question:
Whether it is a truer show of love
To suffer grief for the sake of the dead
Or to leave behind devoted sorrow
And thus return to gladness. To stop the pain—
A natural desire—and by stopping
We can possess once more the many pleasures
That man inherits. For happiness is something
All men must desire. To cease, to smile—
To smile, perhaps to forget? There’s the problem.
For what of inner emptiness may hide
Behind that complacent smile, when we have
Ceased to remember in death those whom we
Have loved in life, holds us to fullness of grief.
For who would bear the stabs and jolts of loss,
The salty welling i’th’eyes, the reproach of the living,
The pow’rless longing, the wanness of the visage,
The inky sables, the stark and blood-red morning
That follows fast th’exuberant starry night,
When he might make return to gladness by
Crossing back the river Lethe? Who would
Suffer mournful chants to ring in his mind
But that the yearning of devotion, that
Relentless sentry who holds death a trifle,
Wreaks havoc on our cool and calming reason,
And makes us rather bear the grief of love,
Than partake in the joys bought by forgetting?
Thus affection makes obsessors of us all,
And thus our gladness is blackened with grief
And simple pleasures of our life on earth
Are kept from us by solemn, mournful love
Of those already dead.—Now come my friends;
I must fall quiet.—Friends, in your sweet innocence
May I find contentment.
My Last Feast Rots
My last feast rots, as beetles, worms, and mice
Dig tunnels in unleavened, holy bread
The temple’s treasures sell now at a price
The businessmen forget what Jesus said.
I’m paralyzed from my heart to my feet
And though my brain works well, my soul is dead
I’m happier without the Paraclete.
But is it only luck that I enjoy?
My book, of cover clover green must meet
The secrets that my anguished thoughts deploy
To find unlikely lodging in this page
Protected by green currency’s false joy.
The boy was the prime mover of my rage
That cursed my love, but soon to death devolved
Like deists’ god, he locked me in a cage
Then left me lonely, living without breath
To take in artificial oxygen
So like an ailing fool afraid of death
Ignoring things that lie beyond her ken
Creating conflict false between two poles
And praying not within the lions’ den
Lamenting rather two plain, healthy goals
That seem to fight when viewed at scale small
But that entwine to plunge me to the coals
Of hell, where ashes know no Wednesday’s call
But only the dull facts of chemistry
That class in which time years ago did stall
But that explains now everything I see
And even what I feel, if feeling still
Can reach my frozen heart, which offers me
Contentment, and in doing so does kill
Beauty and truth, which I approximate
Crudely with fiction and with scholar’s quill
And thoughts that put the good above the great
And prove this godless theory by the hire
Of mercenaries to shut off the gate
That leads into my dopamine desire.
Mere chemistry can write off the sublime
And brand as meaningless the angel choir;
It’s only neurons conjuring the rhyme
And perfect intonation of their song
Which cannot be eternal, for our time
Had origins, like that now phantom long
And winding road that led me to his door
And showed me to a world that did belong
To God, and not to me, e’en as I’d soar
Beyond the bounds of reason and of health
But then, like Lucifer, I wanted more
So I abandoned God with guileless stealth
And built my own men, like a Frankenstein
But these illusions could not give me wealth
Possessed by saints who at God’s table dine,
And still that I knew they did not exist
Was taken as a good and healthy sign
That I from my delusions would desist
And think no longer of my former star.
The feast of Valentine is lost in mist
He died for God, but now is only seen
As lovers’ patron, and is paganized
Another Cupid he, no longer clean
By virtue of the wayward boat capsized
Into a sea of whales and lamb’s blood
In life I’ve engineered and realized
My death, as, bovine, I chew toxic cud
And cast aside the love that once gave light
To all my days, that turned my soul’s black bud
Into a brilliant rose, ready to fight
All earthly horrors, all but love’s cruel sud.
The sandals of God’s virtue could not blight
The arrow aimed by Cupid at my heel
Like Peleus’ son, I could not stay
Invincible forever, could not feel
Fortune divine and its eternal day
Fate triumphed over love, as once it did
For Orpheus, who lost Eurydice
On a walkway of lines drawn by Euclid.
O reason, you will kill this gentle deer
Who longs for water as she stands amid
The desert lands foretold by many a seer
But I grow sick of love, I fear I’ll die
But doubt the pow’r of love to conquer fear
Most likely I’ll proceed with life, will sigh
Until my mournful breaths hinder no more
My doubtful, cheerful academic lie
For if I study within Harvard’s door
And later teach at Oxford, I won’t know
The happiness I knew when we did soar
Our hands together locked, as we did go
Turning Around
The rain pours and I love it
I love it like I love pain, like I love death
Death will be my life, my glory, my escape
The minor strains of thanatophiliac songs rush through my head
But this glory is darkness.
It is afternoon but the angry clouds have pushed aside the feeble sun
No one is here, no one worth caring for
Ones I might have tried to love once
In my new freedom I push them away
They are all enemies, but any speeding car could be my salvation
My pacifism crumbles in the face of true passion
They will miss me, won’t they, the wretches
For a time they may wonder what they did wrong, how they drove me to this
I will not be a fugitive
I will be dead
I shudder at the thought that it may fail
In my mind the water is transformed into bloody concrete
I thought for love of you I would never do this but things have changed
Death is too glorious, too perfect, for me to return to the weakness of life
But it is a sin
If I loved you, I would not kill myself
No, I think resolutely,
No, I have not come this far only to turn around
If I turn around I’ll just turn forward again
One step can’t matter that much
No, I will not be swayed from my course
It is weakness to turn around
But you love me
If I love you,
I will not hurt the woman you love
And you love me
So I turn around
The step seems so weak
But it will save my life
The rain still pours but the sun breaks through
Once again the people are my friends.
Silver Ring
Silver ring on my dresser
How it wants to leap onto my finger!
It sits there alone
an abandoned friend
Why can’t I wear it?
Because every time I look at it I think of you
Because the shiny silver is inextricably tied up with
the scarlet of your blood,
the black of my new wardrobe.
Impossible, that I could ever love anyone else!
Impossible, that before I met you
I was just another girl.
They are all nothing to me now.
I watch the youths flirt like so many
flowers that bloom and die.
With my heart empty and throbbing,
With my black dress covering my virginal skin,
With my eyes full of tears that won’t come,
I step into the darkened church.
The dark calls to me, invites me.
With my soul in the dark
I look ahead to the light.
We will rise again, and love forever.