I Drown My Whole Soul in Your Two Eyes

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

I drown my whole soul in your two eyes
And the mad impulse of this bewildered soul,
So that, plunged into their sweetness and their prayer,
Clearer and better tempered, it may be given back to me.

To unite in order to purify one’s being
As two golden stained-glass windows in a single apse
Cross their differently lucid fires
And penetrate each other!

I am sometimes so heavy, so weary,
Of being the one who does not know how
To be perfect, as he wishes!
My heart beats against its own vows,
My heart whose evil plants,
Between rocks of stubbornness,
Slyly raise
Their flowers of ink or of embers;
My heart so false, so true, depending on the day,
My heart contradictory,
My heart always exaggerated
With immense joy or with threatening fear.

Emile Verhaeren

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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