Feeling her end would come with summer's end,
the incurable invalid
thought with mingled joy and sadness:
"I shall die in the autumn,
and over my grave I shall feel the rustling
of the leaves that will also be dead."

But … cruel with her, too, even death
would not oblige her,
sparing her life through the winter
and, when all the earth was being born anew,
killing her amidst the happy hymns
of glorious spring.

Translated by Kate Flores