I am not sad, no tenderness attracts me Poem by Hugues C. Pernath

I am not sad, no tenderness attracts me,
No body will ever be able to feel mine
No other ear my confusion, my unease
In the speechless torment of language.
Every day more mortally my world contorts
In the fearful ramifications of the pain.
I have borne the very last book, from right to left
And with all my shortcomings it is I who judge
Who is burned and who struggles through the lie.

For nothing other than humility
Than the consummation of doubting,
For nothing else has delimited us.
I will have the light reiterate the darkness,
Rise again from the rock's inglorious repose
And as the meagre water trickles from my wounds
The night approaching hears my twisting heart.

Nothing engrafted has altered me
No generous past drugged me. No moaning.
These things fell apart, these things went right.
I love, I write and I experience friendship
But as a mason does, free and walled in
I will complete the temple whose last cornerstone
Will signify my end. And in that same word
Expressing all my love, I will live on
In the scourge of those sun-signs where I belong.

Translation: Tanis Guest