La Ronde III

Goddess, you alone console me for the many nights of nothingness

and all the folderol of day.

For all this ceaseless irritation is forgot

and I collapse under so much feeling joy!

Your eyes hold an unstilled flame of love

that burns my bones until my marrow flows.

Unto the beast of night I submit,

even milder and keener, your passion is.

Temple and censer is there none

to match your body’s marble pure.

And there is nothing more lavish than your bosom,

the clement warmth held within your sinning lips.

All things turn toward you, loyalty and awe

toward the poet and dreams of beauty!

A moment of forgetting is speechless joy

for all the tortured longing that departs.

Sitor Situmorang
after the French translation of Louis-Charles Damais