I don’t like to sleep when your face inhabits

Night against my neck;

Because I think of death coming fast

Making us sleep too much.

I’ll die, you’ll live is what I fear!

Could aught else make me start?

No more to hear beside my ear

Your breathing and heart.

What? this timid bird, dream-folded

Will leave its nest behind,

Where stretches our two-headed body

With four feet at the end.

Forever last so great a joy

That in the morning ends,

The angel charged with forming my way

My destiny contends.

I’m light beneath this heavy head

That seems a chip off my block,

And stay in shelter. mute, blind, deaf,

Despite the crowing cock.

That gone head into other worlds,

Ruled by other laws,

In the sleep of taproots hurled,

Far from me, to me close.

Ah! to keep you near my throat,

And through your dozing mouth

From your breasts hear the delicate forge

Breathe until my death.

Jean Cocteau