The lover transforms Poem by Herberto Helder

«The lover transforms into the thing loved» with his
savage smile, his teeth,
his hands that flash in the dark. He brings sound
and silence. He brings the noise of the cold waves
and burning stones which rage within him.
And he covers this primordial sound with the staggered
silence of his last life.
The lover transforms from moment to moment,
and it's the moment of the immortal spirit of love
creating flesh in extreme atmospheres, wafting
over all death things.


The lover transforms. He cuts through forms to the core.
And the thing loved is an enclosed bay,
the space of a candlestick,
the backbone and spirit
of women sitting.
He transforms into extinguishing night.
Because the lover is everything, and the thing loved
is a curtain
battered by the wind of the lover on the heights
of an open window. The lover enters
through every open windows and
batters, batters, batters.
The lover is smashing hammer.
that transforms the thing loved.


He enters through her ears,and the woman
who listens
holds that shout forever in her mind
burning like the first day of summer.She hears
and slowly transforms, while sleeping, into that shout
of the lover.
She awakens, and goes, and gives herself to the lover,
she gives him his own shout.
And the lover and the thing loved are a single shout
preceding love.


And they shout and batter. He batters her with his lover
spirit. And she is battered and batters him
with her spirit of the beloved.
Then the world transforms into this harsh noise
of love.While overhead
the silence of the lover and the beloved feed
the surprising silence of the world and of love.