Marx G. Sabel

I HAVE won free of your body at last;

The fire and ice of it

Can neither burn nor freeze me fast.

I look upon you now no whit

Afraid, for I do not desire:

And yet, what is the benefit?

I still must worship; something higher

Impels me youward constantly.

Yet I am fagot for a fire

The heat of which is of such degree

That I shrivel painlessly therein;

And I am flower for a sea

So cold all things that find it win

To death without the slightest change.

Although I have torn the cabals of sin,

I drift beyond the senses’ range

In spiritual perfectness

To lands remote, grotesquely strange,

That thrill my passions now no less

Than even your beauty thrilled before.

But this, this joy, is fathomless;

More certain, steadfast, deeper, more

Inexorable, and it demands

The core of what we thought the core!

You cannot touch it with your hands,

You cannot see it with your eyes:

Only your soul that understands

May teach you its divinities!