Translation is by Herbert Howarth.
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The birds above drink blood when sunset burns,
And God looks on them, she-birds all.
Then my thoughts, my hopes become tears, tears drenching my song
In which God is manifest
As in the absolute mirror beyond time.
Everything is affliction, everything is song. And know this:
Of all wines brewed tears are the strongest brew.
If you sit over the wine at midnight and your body is
Like a hall for prayer or carousal, and your eyes like the world’s luminaries,
Not the wine has dizzied you, but the tears in your blood.
Or if at dusk you lie on your bed and your body is
Like the grave and your lips like rolls of dung,
Not the brain then, but the blood laments in you—
Blood that has turned in your vessels to tears
Because you have meditated on it long.
This is what I think: there is no song without tears. And so
I cannot in any wise praise the sweetness of earth or the beauty of girls.
These marvels are fire-loveliness which ends in a house consumed.
I will not praise anything pleasant, anything sweet and beaming
That, bringing a smile to the lips, leaves immune and unstirred
The lust for the non-existent, the longed-for, hidden higher than
the heights—
What is this lust and our deepest delicate need?
What but the tears of the blood weeping for solace?
What is the purpose of longings? What do they lead to?
They tend to the pure crystallization of tears
When God examines our lust through the glass beyond time.
The birds above drink blood when sunset burns.
They will not range far abroad.
My thoughts and dreams also grow dark at dusk
And all my longings
Intensify into the ultimate dusk.
I will tell you what our lives on earth resemble
Pacing towards the eternal.
They are like ten virgins bidden to the bridal night.
Five, who were wise, decked themselves in mourning,
Five, who were foolish, did nothing to adorn themselves.
Now came the groom and looked, and the foolish ones he reproached
And dismissed them. But to the sad five
He said: I must praise these dear adornments,
The skill of their fashioning, the love that awoke the skill.
Come then, my sisters, come to me, beloved.
I will tell you again what our lives resemble.
They are like ten virgins whose time came
To attend the bridegroom. And five of them,
Five who were wise took jewels betokening grief,
And five who were foolish took trinkets of joy.
Now the bridegroom came, burning and strong like the sun at its zenith,
And the baubles of joy melted to nausea, to nausea melted.
But the jewels of grief were bright like the bright sky,
Pure like the very sky or the heart on fire at love time.
The bridegroom drove out those who were foolish
With bitter reproach. But five who were wise and sad,
He sweetened with favor and gathered them to his lap.
And know, if at dusk you lie on your bed and your body
Is like the grave and your lips like rolls of dung
And you listen to the deeps of the blood crying
And listen to the cry that will not be calmed
—Know you are shaping a jewel for the great king,
For the Lord of Grief who is your groom.
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