Worshipfully
the winter night offers its pure cup to heaven.
And I raise my heart, my benighted heart.
Lord my heart, to your emptiness.
But I know you will not answer. You do not exist, my heart’s desire.
I know you are a lie and my lips pray and
my knees. Your large hands are shut,
your large eyes withdrawn from my despair.
I know you are my imagination.
Lord have pity on my hopelessness.
To your silence I must cry.
The winter night offers its pure cup to heaven.
Darkness.
I am here, the other is elsewhere, the silence doesn’t
give
we are unhappy. Satan passes us through his sieve.
We both suffer and there is no road
between us, neither hand nor word.
Only the common night is incommunicable,
we cannot work and love is not possible.
I listen, I am alone and it frightens me.
I hear the sound of her voice, I hear a cry.
I feel a slight wind ruffle my hair,
from the jaws of the Beast, from death, save her.
Again I feel death between my teeth.
My stomach turns, I catch my breath.
Alone in the winepress I trod grapes deliriously
all night from wall to wall, laughing wildly.
will he who made our eyes not see me?
And he who made our ears not hear me?
I know that where sin is great, your mercy is greater
still.
In the hour of the Prince of this world, deliver us
from evil.
- Emile Verhaeren
