You Tormented Me So Much, With Words Of Love Poem by Peter Mamara

by M. Eminescu (1850-1889)

You tormented me so much with words of love,
— With hot kisses and with hugs.
You knew, with a skill about which I didn't know
— How to stir in me the last nerve.
That feeling was mischievous and painful.
Your kisses were not joy but pain…
Up until now, it seems to me, that you are a lad
Who, secretly has dressed in a woman's clothes.

Even God knows you… You have nice bosoms.
You have lusty red and fleshy lips.
And your black curly hair, like ebony' waves,
Reaches to your waist in light curls.
And your speech is alive and your eye is languorous.
And your fine hand is sweet and cuddly.
And still, it seems to me you have a fault in your temperament,
Since you fill my heart with a cold waft.

And wretched woman you, do you understand
That your eye attracts me like a magnet.
— And yet, it drives me back in secret.
I thought I've loved you, at the start.
But I feel that my blood is a deadly foe to your blood.
Oh, who made me tell you at a bad time, that I love you?
The love from my heart doesn't kill
The way this feeling kills like bad luck: my breath
— My mind, my chest, and my loneliness.

But I quickly left your circle,
I woke up suddenly, like from an alluring dream…
I shall not try ever, to be in your presence.
Since, it gets me drank with a painful drunkenness.
I don't know what thoughts I have. I don't know even where I go.
And I feel that my whole being is without a clue…
You would've wiped out my mind, and my heart,
If further in your web I could've been caught.

My word had no meaning for you.
Your word had upset me very much.
Sometimes I replied to you with such bitter taste
The way in my heart I liked to make you cry.
And through an injustice it seemed that I took revenge:
If, you had cried sometimes because of me;
Oh, our hearts are not at all in harmony.
And they are like two discordant musical notes.

I could be without pity, only with you in this world.
Since you made me weak and soft.
I've lost days and nights with your vain words…
You've frightened me with your empty thoughts…
You are not even a woman… To me you seem a demon
That hides fire from hell, and an awful lack of emotion.
Your life is without harmony.
You are quite good as you are quite bad.

I thank my fortune that I got rid of you quickly,
Without committing the inherent sin, my lady.
Now, I see myself alone once more, and in high spirits, and okay!
Now my muse looks on me with a calm eye.

Those crazy nights of desires and moans
Vanished like some bleak, wild and dreadful dreams.
Now once more, in dreams and in books I immerse my head.
And I rove through empty clouds without a sound.

And seems that at the window, the wind with its breeze,
Blows lightly and melodiously and it whistles.
My ear rings faintly again,
I feel my heart, beating with an ardent desire.

Thousands of smiling dreams take shape in my mind
Since they don't see you, who had them frightened
Out of their secret fortification… And to me,
Your ardent spirit is but a faint memory.

(1876)