the all-denying light or the loyal lash

Now is my soul relieved,

Trembling and yellow-leafed. 

Now it receives the passionate unction 

of your hand
... and feels 

the frigid stiffness of my forehead 

sweetly softened. 

 

I do not know if my undefined disorder 

discolors or strips bare, 

but now it makes no noise. 

 

I do not know if the all-denying light 

or the loyal lash that hastens 

thoughts of you along my brow 

or early anxiousness lays waste 

and floods my eyes and blinds them with the night. 

 

How troubled are my lips 

and yet resistant! 

How separate my body 

from your blood's separate flame! 

And my ulterior thirst is probably less. 

 

I feel a languidness, 

a shattered tiredness, 

almost a childish trait, 

lost in the aging chiaroscuro 

of a melancholy portrait. 

 

[Xavier Villaurrutia {1903-1950} 'Slower than Slow', from Homesick for Death: The Complete Poems of Xavier Villaurrutia]