WHERE OBLIVION DWELLS
Where oblivion dwells,
In the vast gardens without daybreak;
Where I will be only
The memory of a stone buried among nettles
Over wich the wind flees from its sleeplessness.
Where my name will leave
The body it identifies in the arms of time,
Where desire does not exist.
In that vast region where love, that terrible angel,
Will not bury its wings
Like steel in my heart,
Smiling, full of airy grace, while the torment increases.
There, where will end this anxiety that demands a
master in its own image,
Surrending its life to another life,
With no further horizon than other eyes face to face.
Where sorrow and happiness will be only names,
Native sky and earth around a memory;
Where at last I will be free, without noticing it,
Vanished into mist, into absence,
An absence as soft as a child's skin.
There, far away;
Where oblivion dwells.
Luis Cernuda
Translated by Eugenio Florit