True Corpse

Line the mouth and with it wiped the face,
And expurgate the corpse is and innate
Illuminating fate in earthen speak,
Most lowly wedlock come to consummate.

Slay that voice that used to to my face
While we disheveled and disseminate,
Immured these eyes: and I hold have Douve dead
In Herbheit an sich with me cribbed again.

However chill may be that mounts of thee,
However scorch intimity our glace,
Douve, I do speak in you; you I embrace
In action of to know and of to name.

—Yves Bonnefoy (trans: Mark Daniel Cohen)

© Mark Daniel Cohen—Nietzsche Circle, 2007

(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, October 2007)