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was filling her like fullness.

Full as a fruit with sweetness and with darkness

was she with her great death, which was so new

that for the time she could take nothing in.

She had attained a new virginity

and was intangible; her sex had closed

like a young flower at the approach of evening,

and her pale hands had grown so disaccustomed

to being a wife that even the slim god's

endlessly gentle contact as he led her

disturbed her like a too great intimacy.

Even now she was no longer that blond woman

who'd sometimes echoed in the poet's poems,

no longer the broad couch's scent and island,

nor yonder man's possession any longer.

She was already loosened like long hair,

and given far and wide like fallen rain,

and dealt out like a manifold supply.

She was already root.

And when, abruptly,

the god had halted her and, with an anguished

outcry, outspoke the word：He has turned round！ —

she took in nothing, and said softly：Who？

But in the distance, dark in the bright exit,

someone or other stood, whose countenance

was indistinguishable. Stood and saw

how, on a strip of pathway between meadows,

with sorrow in his look, the god of message

turned silently to go behind the figure

already going back by that same pathway,

its paces circumscribed by lengthy shroudings,

uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.