Kiss me and allow a dead mouth
to rot on yours
and let the stinking flesh of my dusk
sing it to you the old bird
in the wilderness
of your morning—
mornings, beams of wind and sun,
petals and the pus
that the olive tree drops
as it withers.

And in the night of the present,
hidden between its leaves
the dead flower, the white smell of oblivion,
now in your eyes,
jasmine, a single petal
of the night
bursting open and becoming light
of the Shades of Hell.

Translated by Anna Crowe