In a Flash of Self-Forgetting

I myself chose that auspicious moment
when I was busy one twilight evening
floating away with you in the passion of my own beauty,
while you were drunk, thinking me some unknown star
in a mockery of neglect that follows the discovery of the fleeting!

When you were desperately frantic
to touch that horizon a hundred light-years away from me,
alas, I was mad then
to lovingly bind you with love, tending to love with love!

When some private tears rise beyond the limits of words
and cry out "I love you, love you," in lamentation,
by then in this silent thirst of brick-sand-stone
I have lost myself completely in self-oblivion!

Today it seems the moon's chariot of victory
has grown weary and surrendered to the pitch darkness it held at bay!

My heart, tremulous with joy in the gentle southern breeze,
seems to want again and again today to recover that picture
in which was painted your and my solitary feeling!

Touching the depths of my mind, even today you seem
to make me swoon with love in the radiant youth of full moonlight,
in the arrogance of endless sin!

In some sunless dense darkness, by the window's edge, in tears,
I find only you in the monsoon's ceaseless heavy rain.

Time that has stumbled and fallen still today stands frozen,
as if seeking only you in this deep, secret living through rain!

My uncomprehending heart cries out many, many times
as if it wants to tell you something,
as if it wants not to let you go...
weaving nets of soft chains across a hundred years!

I know all this is meaningless, merely!
Yet in exchange for what I've received in one life, what if you asked for something!
I have no wealth to pay the full price of the priceless,
but I do have enough arrogance to show, when the time comes,
that I won't take payment for what I gave unasked!

Giving all madness leave, keeping precedence to the end of not coming close...
I take my farewell!—I won't say such things again now!
I'll only say, I've managed this heart of mine many, many times,
so that this time, going far away, touching and touching the horizon,
making the gap of a hundred births my provisions, I may find an infinite, unburdened refuge!