To...

You have been my love for so many years,

My giddiness before so much waiting,

Which nothing can age or cool;

Even that which awaited our death,

Or slowly learned how to fight us,

Even that which is strange to us,

Both my eclipses and my returns.

Closed like a box-wood shutter,

An extreme and compact chance

s our chain, our mountain-range,

Our compressing splendor and glow.

I say chance, O my hammered one;

Either of us can receive

The mysterious part of the other

While keeping its secret unshed;

And the pain that comes from elsewhere

Finds its separation at last

In the flesh of our unity,

Finds its solar orbit at last

At the center of our own cloud

Which it rends and starts once more.

As I feel it, I say chance.

You have raised up the mountain-peak

Which my waiting will have to clear

When tomorrow disappears.