trembling and submissive

If our love were not
at the same time a secret,
a torment, a doubt,
an interrogation;

if it were not a long
interminable wait,
an emptiness in the breast
where the heart beats
like a closed fist
on some impassive door;

if our love were not
the painful dream
in which you live without me,
inside me, a life
which fills me with fright;

if it were not a sleeplessness,
an illumined cry
in the deep night;

if our love were not
a tightrope
on which the two of us go
without a net over the void;

if your words were
only words for
naming things
of yours, nothing more, and mine;

if they did not revive,
if they did not evoke tragic
distances and rancors
transposed and forgotten;

if your look were
always the one that for an instant
--but what an eternal instant!--
is your deepest surrender;

if your kisses were not
for any lips but mine
trembling and submissive;
if your lingering saliva
did not blend in my mouth
its infinite taste;

if together our lips,
naked like bodies,
and our bodies together
like naked lips
did not form one body
and one breath,
ours would not be love,
our love would not be.
[Xavier Villaurrutia]

This is the closest that I could come to the version that I found in The Book of Adelheide--and I preferred that previous translation. So if you have it handy, H, would you send it to me?