Elegos for the Dancer Cumani

The wind of the woods

races brightly to the hills.

Precociously it dawns: the adolescent,

of the blood, has similar dismay.

And the water's track is dawn

upon the shore. In me exhausted was

the torment of the sand,

to heart-beats, roving the night.

The durable most ancient cry pains:

pity for the youthful animal

struck dead among the grasses

of bitter morning after the new rains.

The earth is in that desperate breast,

and there my voice has measure:

You dance to its closed number

and time returns in figures fresh:

sadness too, but so to quiet

turned that through sweetness burns.

In this silence rapidly consuming

confound me not ephemeral,

leave me not alone in light;

now that in mild fire in me,

you are born Anadyomene.

Structure

23 lines · 7 stanzas