Beauty

To L. Ličenoski

It pursues me like a woman debauched,
insatiable, lonely, lecherous.
It seizes me in its fiery embrace
inescapably, with fateful force.

And lightly it tosses me into
a strange dance, a strange composition;
I dwindle away, die in convulsions,
and come back to life as a poem.

Then with a look, in a radiant cascade,
I drown in the depths of the blueness,
and call out again to the beauty:
Let me be pierced by your rays!

Pierce me that all may subside
without reasoning, without idle musing,
even the splendor of this madness—
so your splendor alone burns bright.