Chapter XXIV

So soon as our lips touch, we feel so much more
luminous together that it would seem as though
two Gods loved and united in us.

We feel our hearts to be so divinely fresh and
so renewed by their virgin light that, in their
brightness, the universe is made manifest to us.

In our eyes, joy is the only ferment of the world
that ripens and becomes fruitful innumerably on
our roads here below; as in clusters spring up
among the silken lakes on which sails travel the
myriad blossoms of the stars above.

Order dazzles us as fire embers, everything
bathes us in its light and appears a torch to us:
our simple words have a sense so lovely that we
repeat them to hear them without end.

We are the sublime conquerors who vanquish
eternity without pride and without a thought of
trifling time: and our love seems to us always to
have been.

XXV

To prevent the escape of any part of us from our
embrace that is so intense as to be holy, and to
let love shine clear through the body itself, we
go down together to the garden of the flesh.

Your breasts are there like offerings and your
two hands are stretched out to me; and nothing is
of so much worth as the simple provender of words
said and heard.

The shadow of the white boughs travels over your
neck and face, and your hair unloosens its bloom
in garlands on the swards.

The night is all of blue silver; the night is a
lovely silent bed--gentle night whose breezes,
one by one, will strip the great lilies erect in
the moonlight.