I Sit Alone with My Flame in My Breast

I sit alone, imprisoned in the green room of the yard.
No one is here—not friends, not loved ones, not strangers.
Everything is calm now. Only silence lies in wait, to catch
the restless murmurs of the leaves, which it instantly turns to stone.

The night opens nobly, like a flower unfurling the day.
The bud of a red rose, unseen, is breaking
and from its cracked leaves a red-faced fire peeps out.
The bud grows, expands, and sets the entire yard ablaze,
but a moment later the red rose vanishes and the fire dies away.
The red flame finds a place in my heart,
and there it slowly grows into a great flaming tree.

I sit alone, imprisoned in the green room of the yard.
No one is here—not friends, not loved ones, not strangers.

I sit alone with my flame in my breast.
It warms me more intensely than even the words of the poets
who vanished in the cosmos and the blueness,
searching for the world of beauty,
of a beauty unknown and unsurpassed.

The red rose, like blood, is spreading, spilling out,
and this flame in my breast will remain here forever.