Woman in Love

That is my window. Just now

I have so softly wakened.

I thought that I would float.

How far does my life reach,

and where does the night begin

I could think that everything

was still me all around;

transparent like a crystal's

depths, darkened, mute.

I could keep even the stars

within me; so immense

my heart seems to me; so willingly

it let him go again.

whom I began perhaps to love, perhaps to hold.

Like something strange, undreamt-of,

my fate now gazes at me.

For what, then, am I stretched out

beneath this endlessness,

exuding fragrance like a meadow,

swayed this way and that,

calling out and frightened

that someone will hear the call,

and destined to disappear

inside some other life.