To. . .

You have been my love for so many years,
It makes me dizzy to think of so much hope,
And my dizziness won't be aged, or cooled;
Even by what waited for our death,
Or slowly learned how to fight us,
Even by what is foreign to us,
Or by my eclipses and my returns.

A boxwood shutter
Encloses our outrageous luck,
Our chain of mountains,
Our compressed splendor.

I say luck, my wounded one,
Each of us can receive
The mystery of the other
Without divulging it;
Moreover our grief, which comes from elsewhere,
That grief, which destroys and renews us,
Will dissolve itself
In the flesh of our union,
Will finally find its orbit
In our cloudy center.

I say luck; it's how I feel.
You have lifted the mountain top
Which my hope will have to climb
When tomorrow disappears.

From This Smoke That Carried Us by Rene Char. Copyright © 2004 by White Pine Press. Translation copyright © 2004 by Susanne Dubroff. All rights reserved.