Your hair is the little unknown root
of the tree of my vine.
Your hair is the strand of a mitre
of a fantasy I lost!

    Your body is the frothing tumult
of a crimsoned Jordan;
and it undulates, like a beatific lash
that humiliates the serpent of evil!

    Your arms yield the thirst of the infinite,
with their chaste Hesperides of light,
two white redemptive roads,
two dying births with a cross.
And they are formed in the unconquered blood
of my unattainable blue!

    Your feet are two heraldic larks
eternally arriving from my yesterday!
Beautiful Regia! Your feet are the two tears
I stifled in my descent from the Spirit,
on a Palm Sunday I entered the World,
now forever distant from Bethlehem.
 
 
 

Translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi